Business Insider: U.S. law enforcement strike deal with Sinoa drug cartel

Aninvestigation by El Universalfound that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs while Sinaloa provided information on rival cartels.Sinaloa, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, supplies80% of the drugsentering the Chicago area and has a presence in cities across the U.S.There have long been allegations that Guzman,consideredto be "the world’s most powerful drug trafficker,"coordinateswith American authorities.But theEl Universal investigation is the first to publishcourt documentsthat include corroborating testimony froma DEA agent and a Justice Department official.The written statements were made to the U.S. District Court in Chicago in relation to the arrest of Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, the son of SinaloaleaderIsmael "El Mayo" Zambada and allegedly theSinaloa cartel’s "logistics coordinator."Here's whatDEA agent Manuel Castanon told the Chicago court:"On March 17, 2009, I met for approximately 30 minutes in a hotel room in Mexico City with Vincente Zambada-Niebla and two other individuals — DEA agent David Herrod and a cooperating source [Sinaloa lawyer Loya Castro] with whom I had worked since 2005. ...I did all of the talking on behalf of [the] DEA."A few hours later, Mexican Marines arrested Zambada-Niebla (a.k.a. "El Vicentillo")on charges oftrafficking more than a billion dollars in cocaine and heroin. Castanon and three other agents then visited Zambada-Niebla in prison, where the Sinaloa officer"reiterated his desire to cooperate," according toCastanon.El Universal, citing court documents, reports that DEA agents met with high-level Sinaloa officials more than 50 times since 2000.Then-Justice Department prosecutor Patrick Hearntold the Chicago courtthat, according to DEA special agentSteve Fraga, Castro "provided information leading to a 23-ton cocaineseizure, other seizures related to" various drug trafficking organizations, and that"El Mayo" Zambadawanted hisson to cooperate with the U.S.El UniversalA screenshot from the documents published by El Universal."The DEA agents met with members of the cartel in Mexico to obtain information about their rivals and simultaneously built a network of informants who sign drug cooperation agreements, subject to results, to enable them to obtain future benefits, including cancellation of charges in the U.S.,"reports El Universal, whichalsointerviewed more than one hundred active and retired police officers as wellas prisoners and experts.Zambada-Niebla's lawyer claimed to the court that in the late 1990s, Castro struck a deal with U.S. agents in which Sinaloa would provide information about rival drug trafficking organizations while the U.S. would dismiss its case against theSinaloa lawyerand refrain from interfering withSinaloa drug trafficking activities or actively prosecuting Sinaloa leadership."The agents stated that this arrangement had been approved by high-ranking officials and federal prosecutors,"Zambada-Nieblalawyer wrote.After being extradited to Chicago in February 2010, Zambada-Nieblaarguedthat he was also"immune from arrest or prosecution" because he actively provided information to U.S. federal agents.Zambada-Niebla alsoallegedthatOperation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the cartelin exchange for information used to take down its rivals. (If true, thatre-raises the issueregarding what Attorney General Eric Holder knew about the gun-running arrangements.)A Mexican foreign service officertold Stratforin April 2010 that the U.S. seemed to have sided with the Sinaloa cartel in an attempt to limit the violence in Mexico.El Universal reported that the coordination between the U.S. and Sinaloa, as well as other cartels, peakedbetween 2006 and 2012, which is when drug traffickersconsolidated their gripon Mexico. The paper concluded by saying that it is unclear whether the arrangements continue.The DEA and other U.S. agencies declined to comment to El Universal.

Syria becomes major producer of Meth

By Stephen Kalin
Reuters

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria has become a major amphetamines exporter and consumer as the trauma of the country's brutal civil war fuels demand and the breakdown in order creates opportunity for producers.

Drugs experts, traders and local activists say Syrian production of the most popular of the stimulants, known by its former brand name Captagon, accelerated in 2013, outpacing production in other countries in the region such as Lebanon.

Reports of seizures and interviews with people connected to the trade suggest it generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues in Syria, potentially providing funding for weapons, while the drug itself helps combatants dig in for long, grueling battles.

Most other economic activity in Syria has ground to a halt in the past two years due to the violence, shortages and international sanctions.

Consumption of Captagon outside the Middle East is negligible, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), but it is a significant drug in the Arab Gulf, and nascent markets were detected in North Africa last year.

Sitting at a crossroads in the Middle East, Syria has long been a transit point for drugs coming from Europe, Turkey and Lebanon and destined for Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf.

The breakdown of state infrastructure, weakening of borders and proliferation of armed groups during the nearly three-year battle for control of Syria has transformed the country from a stopover into a major production site.

Even before the conflict, Saudi Arabia received about seven metric tons of Captagon in 2010, a third of world supply, according to UNODC figures.

A member of a prominent drug trading family in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where much of that country's drug production and smuggling takes place, told Reuters that demand from the Gulf kingdom had increased since then, and Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates were also big consumers.

The trader said production in Lebanon fell 90 percent in 2013 from two years earlier, and wholly attributed the drop to a shift in production to Syria. He said some production might also have moved to Syria from Turkey during the past year.

Khabib Ammar, a Damascus-based media activist, said Syrian fighters involved with the drugs trade were buying weapons with the money they made, though Reuters could not independently verify claims that Captagon profits were being used to fund either side of the conflict.

Syrian government forces and rebel groups each say the other uses Captagon to endure protracted engagements without sleep, while clinicians say ordinary Syrians are increasingly experimenting with the pills, which sell for between $5 and $20.

REGULAR SEIZURES

The drug was first produced in the West in the 1960s to treat hyperactivity, narcolepsy and depression, but by the 1980s was banned in most countries because of its addictive properties and no longer has a legitimate medical use. Its active ingredient, fenethylline, is metabolized by the body into the stimulants amphetamine and theophylline.

Lebanese psychiatrist Ramzi Haddad said the drug had the typical effects of a stimulant. "It gives you a kind of euphoria. You're talkative, you don't sleep, you don't eat, you're energetic," he said.

Production is cheap and simple, requiring "only basic knowledge of chemistry and a few scales", he added. Syrian and Lebanese authorities regularly seize homemade laboratories used to make the pills.

National drug control offices in the region also report Syria's increasing role in the trade.

Colonel Ghassan Chamseddine, head of Lebanon's drug enforcement unit, told Reuters the pills are hidden in trucks passing from Syria to Lebanese ports where they are then shipped to the Gulf.

"It comes from Syria. Most of the Captagon production is there, according to our information," he said.

Official figures show Lebanon seized more than 12.3 million Captagon pills in 2013. Chamseddine said most of that came from a few large busts in the Bekaa Valley, which borders Syria. One seizure of 5.3 million pills implicated a Syrian family that he said has been smuggling drugs for 10 years.

The Lebanese trader said the main players in Lebanon's Captagon trade are established families in the Bekaa who started off smuggling hashish and cocaine decades ago. They either produce the pills themselves or provide the materials and equipment to partners inside Syria and then help smuggle the pills out of the country, he said.

Turkish authorities have also identified a rise in Captagon production in Syria. In May, they seized 7 million pills en route to Saudi Arabia, according to Saudi media. The head of Turkey's anti-drug-trafficking directorate said the pills were made in Syria with materials from Lebanon, but he couldn't confirm a connection to rebels there.

Dubai police also reported making a seizure of a record 4.6 million Captagon pills in December.

MUTUAL DENIALS

Syrian state media regularly mention Captagon pills as one of the items government forces seize alongside weapons when they capture rebel fighters or raid their bases.

A drug control officer in the central city of Homs told Reuters he had observed the effects of Captagon on protesters and fighters held for questioning.

"We would beat them, and they wouldn't feel the pain. Many of them would laugh while we were dealing them heavy blows," he said. "We would leave the prisoners for about 48 hours without questioning them while the effects of Captagon wore off, and then interrogation would become easier."

The opposition retorts that the government is aiming to sully its reputation and say it is the pro-government 'shabiha' gunmen that run the Captagon trade.

Opposition activist Ammar said consumption was limited to government supporters and fighters who use the cover of the revolution to pursue lucrative criminal activities.

"These days, the criminals and addicts do whatever they want," he said. "They've increased because of hunger, poverty and lack of work."

A psychiatrist named George said he treated Captagon users at his clinic in the government stronghold of Latakia.

"The use of Captagon and other pills increased after the revolution even among civilians because of psychological and economic pressures," he said.

He said the government exaggerated the drug's prevalence among opponents, but added that it was likely both the shabiha and rebel Free Syrian Army were users, "especially when they are assigned night duty or other long missions".

A resident of the central city of Homs said the use of Captagon and hashish had become widespread and open in the past year in his neighborhood, an area populated mostly by Alawites, the same Muslim sect that President Bashar al-Assad belongs to.

"It's young people in general, and most of them are in the National Defence Force and shabiha organizations," he said.

(Additional reporting by a reporter in Syria whose name is withheld for security reasons; Editing by Will Waterman)

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA0B04H20140112?irpc=932

What do you know, they legalize weed and no one went crazy.......Time's veiw on Co. Legalization.

The center of the movement to legalize pot is in a red sandstone building a few blocks from Colorado’s state capitol in Denver. The activists who work there call it the marijuana mansion. Sprawling and a little shabby, with stained glass and dormer windows, it houses some of the country’s top cannabis lawyers, as well as a policy group that advocates for the reform of pot laws and the industry’s growing trade association. On the first Friday in January—Day 3 of Colorado’s grand experiment with retail pot sales —Christian Sederberg, an attorney who helped implement the law, was lounging in a room off the mansion’s foyer, exulting in the success of its debut.

“The rollout’s gone amazingly well, and we knew it would,” he said, leaning back against a brown leather sofa as sunlight streamed through the windows. ”We’re on the right side of history.”

It may be too soon to say that, but Colorado has certainly made history. On Jan. 1, it became the only state in the world to legalize the sale of recreational marijuana to anyone over 21. At 8 a.m. on New Year’s Day, as most of the country slept off their hangovers, smokers were lined up in a light snow for the grand opening of Denver’s retail pot shops. Customers were happy to wait for hours and pay high prices for their chance to legally purchase taxed, tested and locally grown strains like Bubba Kush and Sour Diesel. Businesses say they banked $1 million on the first day, even though only a few dozen stores were ready to open their doors. And despite warnings that it would unleash reefer madness, the opening days went off almost without a hitch.

The early success of pot’s pilot program was ushered in by a phenomenon almost as rare: a government working as it should. Colorado’s Amendment 64 passed in Nov. 2012 with 55% of the vote—a mandate that belied a lack of institutional support. The healthy margin was driven by a grassroots campaign that cast marijuana as less harmful than alcohol, tapping into the electorate’s libertarian streak and attracting young and new voters to the polls in a presidential swing state. But only two state legislators endorsed the constitutional amendment. Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper opposed it, as did Denver’s mayor, and newspaper editorial boards shied away. “Don’t break out the Cheetos and Goldfish too quickly,” Hickenlooper snarked after the vote, noting that marijuana remained illegal under federal law.

But then something strange happened. At a time when Washington is crippled by partisan squabbling and state governments are more polarized than ever, stakeholders in Colorado set aside the divisions of the campaign and set to carrying out the public’s will. “Regardless of what their viewpoint was, everyone wanted to make this work in the best way possible,” says Barbara Brohl, Colorado’s top marijuana regulator, who won’t say whether she supported the law. “We kind of took politics out of it.”

Despite his reservations about the idea, Hickenlooper set up a task force to make it work, chaired by Brohl and Jack Finlaw, the governor’s top lawyer. “The governor came along quite reluctantly,” says Sam Kamin, a law professor at the University of Denver and member of the implementation task force. But once the amendment passed, Kamin adds, Hickenlooper “did nothing to stand in the way. The governor said we’re not going to relitigate this.”

The task force held meetings all over the Front Range, seeking input on issues ranging from advertising restrictions to child safety. The Democratic-controlled legislature, working with the support of law enforcement officials, passed measures to heavily tax sales and earmark the first $40 million in revenue toward school construction. A passel of legal and policy experts hustled through the process of building a regulatory framework, borrowing heavily from a 2010 measure that regulated the state’s existing medical marijuana market. And marijuana activists made pragmatic concessions—from product caps to packaging restrictions to perks for existing medical-marijuana businesses—that helped smooth divisions. “They were able to persuade their brethren in the medical marijuana industry to come on board with those reforms rather than to be oppositional,” says Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

As it scrambled to iron out the kinks ahead of a Jan. 1 rollout, known here as “Green Wednesday,” Colorado officials had the heady task of anticipating the potential pitfalls of an untried experiment. If it succeeds, it could mark the beginning of the end of the era of pot prohibition; if it flops, Colorado could become a cautionary tale. “This was uncharted territory. We were definitely the first in the world,” Brohl says. And activists and regulators were conscious of how their perch as pot pioneers carried responsibilities. ”We are in a fishbowl,” Brohl says. “We know that everybody is watching and we take that responsibility very seriously.”

The Centennial State isn’t the only one that is experimenting with looser drug laws. After decades of failed drug policy, and with nationwide support for legalization rising to 58% in one recent poll, 20 U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia, now allow medical marijuana sales. Some municipalities have decriminalized possession. Washington State is preparing to roll out its own retail cannabis shops, likely sometime this summer, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is reportedly preparing to announce later this week an executive order to allow limited use of medical marijuana in the Empire State. Measures to legalize pot sales will be on the ballot in several more states in 2014 and 2016, including possibly California. Representatives from Uruguay, Britain, Chile and Brazil have all consulted Colorado experts how to assemble a regulatory framework. Sederberg was among several Colorado marijuana experts who traveled last fall to Montevideo for days of meetings with Uruguay’s cabinet before its legal cannabis market debuts.

It seems inevitable that some problems will materialize. Supporters of Colorado’s marijuana industry fret about heavy taxes and high prices, the potential of dwindling supply, overregulation, and the specter of intervention from the federal government. A car accident involving a stoned driver, use by minors or pot tourists carrying their product across state lines could all tarnish the rollout. Then there is the biggest concern: a lack of access to banking services that has forced legal pot businesses to operate mostly in cash, both a legal and safety hazard. “We’re not going to get it 100% right the first time,” Kamin cautions.

But a few days into Colorado’s big experiment, there are few, if any, major failures to point to. And so, as darkness descended on Jan. 3, a few dozen industry insiders gathered at a Mexican restaurant in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood for a marijuana fundraiser. Business owners and lobbyists sipped margaritas, hobnobbed with state legislators and swapped tales from a wild opening week.

“This isn’t primarily a political movement anymore,” explains Taylor West, the incoming deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association. “It’s becoming a thriving industry.”

http://swampland.time.com/2014/01/06/why-legal-weed-is-working-in-colorado/

Probably never be completely clean.

What i really hate about being a junkie is that even after being off heroin for awhile now i still get that feeling like I could control it somehow. Like I have another run in me. I know that I don't logically but I can't help but get that feeling every now and then.

When I used to go to NA and AA meetings everyone would talk about how the drugs just completely fucked their life up. I always found this to be disingenuous to say the least. I look back and think "damn that was fun". Even though there was a lot of hard times, and i hurt a lot of people, the drugs were fun. I don't give a fuck who you are. if you weren't having fun while you were on drugs, you weren't doing them right.

I guess for me, I will probably never be completely clean. I smoke weed, I have a beer from time to time and thats it. I don't really stress it too much. Yeah, I get lazy when I smoke, I don't get as much stuff done as I should, but fuck it.

One of the things that really piss me off about the 12 step recovery bullshit, is that it is structured to make you feel like shit for doing something that (at the time) I liked to do. Somehow guilt became this thing that I would have to deal with every fucking time i got high. Guilt for what though? Look, I think of it like this, If you really want to be completely clean, go for it, good luck. But if you can't do it, you are not a lost cause, and you're definitely not alone. I think as addicts we beat ourselves up too much. In fact, usually it's everyone else that has an issue with our drug use and/or abuse. If you're not stealing from people to support your habit, or hurting another person, then it's up to you what you put in your body.

If you do want to quit, then decide that you want to sometime have a beer, do it without the fucking shame and guilt. Because if you really want to quit, you will, if you don't you won't. It's really that simple.

But don't let these super recovery wing nuts tell you that  you have to "start over" or "get in touch with your higher power" and "if you want to, you can use a rock as your higher power"
really, ...are you serious? because if I were to have a higher power, it sure as fuck wouldn't be a rock.

Here's the thing, quitting if fucking hard. All your friends get high because those are the people that are there when your doing drugs. You help each other get high. When one is sick the others help and vice-versa. So instantly you're alone when you quit. It's something you have to deal with. Another thing is that it takes time for others to get the idea of you being clean. So for awhile people will bring drugs around thinking it's like the other 10,000 times you said you were quitting.

Then you have all the emotional bullshit that catches up to you when you aren't full of drugs. It's not a cliche, you really do feel like a mess when you quit. Of course you feel like shit at that point anyway, but at least when you quit, you know there will be a time when you feel better.

Basically, I'm saying that for me, quitting sucked. I liked getting high, but when you take it to the point where you are going to die, then it becomes a choice, you to either keep going and hope you can make it last, or you can try to stay clean. If you need to pull a couple tubes (bongs) to get you by, fuck it go for it. Just remember that if you can't keep it at that level then you might want to rethink that.

I don't look at myself as a failure, I just stopped letting other people dictate how I was going to feel about whatever i want to do.

GOOD LUCK.

 

Heroin use spreading to communities not touched before

Heroin has become the deadly crest of a wave of addictive drug use in communities around the country.
With addicts desperate for a cheaper high than prescription drugs or seeking a more powerful fix, experts are seeing heroin addiction treatment admissions, overdoses and fatalities rising in nearly every region, including areas where the drug has seldom been seen before.

In Ohio, state officials say drug overdoses from heroin increased 25 percent between 2008 and 2009, and are continuing to rise.

In Cowlitz County, Wash., an unusually pure shipment of heroin killed seven people in just five days during April.

In St. Louis city and county, officials report heroin killed 310 people in the past two years alone.
Data from death certificates compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2009, the most recent year available, showed heroin killed nearly 3,500 Americans, almost double the number that perished a decade ago.

Scripps Howard News Service analyzed those statistics and found heroin is a multi-generational threat, but becoming proportionately more deadly among those under 30.
Addiction experts and law enforcement officials say young people may be at particular risk as they move from the relatively certain effects of prescription painkillers to a street drug notorious for ebbs and spikes in potency.

A third of the 3,358 deaths recorded in 2009 occurred among people under the age of 30, including 93 deaths among teens. The bulk of the deaths -- 2,178-- clustered among people in their 30s, 40s and 50s.

In 2001 heroin killed 1,901 people. Twenty-two percent were under 30, including 45 teens.

Experts say there is no typical heroin user. They come from rich and poor neighborhoods, all levels of education, and can be young, middle-aged or old.
"The death certificates don't tell us how long a person had been using heroin, but given the patterns of opioid use we're seeing among people in their 40s and 50s, it's not that surprising that the heroin overdoses are spanning the generations too,'' said Dr. Wilson Compton, director for Epidemiology, Services and Prevention at the National Institute of Drug Abuse.

Federal risk surveys from 2011 show 2.9 percent of high school students have ever tried heroin, and that more than 350,000 Americans of all ages are addicted to the drug. A national surveillance network of hospital emergency rooms estimates that of nearly a million visits for illicit drug abuse in 2009, more than 219,000 were due to heroin.

Law enforcement and addiction experts say the current surge in heroin deaths reflects both the increased availability of the illicit drug in many U.S. communities and a large population of Americans willing to use it because it is cheaper and often more available than prescription opiates, such as OxyContin, that millions have become dependent upon.

In fact, addiction experts from Washington University in St. Louis said in mid-July that reformulation of OxyContin in 2010, aimed at making it harder to crush and dissolve in water for a quick high, seems to have prompted many users to switch to heroin.

The researchers' analysis of data from more than 2,500 patients entering 150 treatment centers in 39 states showed that OxyContin use had plunged by more than half since the formula change.

In interviews with about 150 addicts who had stopped using Oxy, when each was asked what drug they were using now, "most said something like, `because of the decreased availability of OxyContin, I switched to heroin,' '' said Theodore Cicero, a professor of psychiatry specializing in brain reactions to drugs who led the research. His team reported the early findings in a July 12 letter published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

But heroin is a devil's bargain for addicts.

Although a dose that is smoked, snorted or injected may cost $10 compared to the street cost of $50 and up for OxyContin and similar drugs, it's effects are uncertain, more or less powerful at the whim of how dealers "cut" their product with various fillers.

"From a medical perspective, heroin is identical to opioid addiction. It follows the same process in the brain,'' Compton said. "The great uncertainty is the differences in purity, and what may have been added to it. You never know what you're going to get, even if you're taking the same amount you did the last time."

In southern Ohio, "the pain pill addiction is still strong and the stories that we hear are that users start off with the Vicodin, the Oxycodone, the OxyContin. Their tolerance gets higher. It costs more money, and then they turn to heroin as a cheaper alternative,'' said Steve Gifford, program director at the Northland Rehab Center in Milford.
The results can be deadly. In Longview, Wash., a small batch of "hot heroin" -- unusually pure -- snuffed out seven lives during one five-day span in April by bringing on almost instant respiratory failure in the users.

In San Diego County, Calif., 721 people under the age of 25 were admitted to treatment centers for heroin addiction last year, three times the number admitted just five years before.
"We have got a heroin epidemic, but it's hidden,'' said Nancy Knott, a counselor with the Scripps Treatment Program in La Jolla, Calif.

St. Louis has been one of the hardest hit areas, with the city and county recording 116 heroin deaths in 2010, and 194 last year, even as the Drug Enforcement Administration and 32 other law enforcement agencies arrested dozens of dealers in the region. Local prosecutors have charged many of them with drug-induced homicide.

Although it follows much the same distribution channels as marijuana, heroin has become more available in some areas, experts say.

The Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center noted last year that heroin is "readily available throughout the U.S." The threat assessment also spotlighted the growing involvement of Mexican drug gangs in expanding the distribution of heroin the heartland America.

Once largely considered an urban street drug favored by older teens and young adults "heroin is really cutting across different demographics, it's really reaching into just about every part of the country, although it's more of a problem in a few areas,'' said Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the DEA headquarters in Washington.

East of the Mississippi, most of the heroin is from Colombia and comes in white powder form, Payne said. In the western half of the country, "it's mostly Mexican black tar, very nasty stuff, usually not as pure," the agent added.

The spread of heroin heralds not only more overdoses, but more people hooked on the drug, which is notoriously difficult to shake.

"It feels really good. That's why nobody ever stops once they start,'' said Conner Rehbein, a 21-year-old addict working to recover in a Baltimore treatment center.

Opiate dependence "is very, very difficult to break," said Jon Morgenstern, director of Treatment Research at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University and director of addiction treatment at Columbia Medical Center in New York. "The treatment is very complicated and problematic. There are several medications that can help block the effects, but all have their own problems and side effects."

As the deadly progression from prescription pain medicines to heroin becomes better understood, "One of the things we really have to address is getting more focus on early intervention, on physicians and the medical system spotting these problems with prescriptions before people really get hooked and desperate enough to turn to heroin,'' Morgenstern said.

(Scripps Howard News Service correspondent Thomas Hargrove, Scripps National Investigative Unit multimedia reporter Kristin Volk, Jay Warren of Scripps TV station WCPO in Cincinnati, and Melissa Mecija of Scripps station KGTV in San Diego contributed to this report. Contact Lee Bowman at Bowmanl@shns.com) 

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

"Its been awhile"

I haven't really written here in awhile, and for the one or two people that come here, well, it is what it is. I moved away from where i lived before and have since tried to start over. I isn't easy to but I am doing better than before. I had gotten to the point where i really had given up. I still flirt with the idea from time to time but I'm a lot more shall we say "stable".

I have decided to try to write here more often. See, I'm trying to write for a living but that's not really working. Mostly because I'm lazy. I write, but i don't really work as hard as i should or could. I am so used to sitting around and waiting for the next hustle so i can get high, which by the way used to be on heroin, then i started fucking that "bath salts" shit, that I find it really hard to force myself to do shit that is productive.

I haven't used anything except weed in awhile, but I struggle with the frame of mind and the thought process every day. I'm 41 and I've gotten high since i was about 7 years old. In fact I haven't been sober for more than a few months ever. I know some of you might read this and think "Why would anyone put this shit on the web where everyone can read it?" Well, its because I really don't give a fuck anymore. See, the way i figure it, if you're the type of person whom would be so shallow and pristine that this offends you, or makes you think that you are any better than I am just because you haven't done, or been through some of the shit I have, then you mean absolutely nothing to me anyway, so fuck you. And if even one other person reads this and thinks "Yeah, I know how this guy feels" then I'm cool with that.

So, I won't be promoting this to anyone or on any websites, but if you want to, go ahead. I will be on here at least once a week to drop some lines and keep this thing going till i get a real job.

Peace.

A barber cuts an Afghan drug addict’s hair at the NEJAT drug treatment center in Kabul. The center works on the prevention, treatment and care of drug addiction and HIV/AIDS. Between 2005 and 2009, the number of Afghan heroin addicts tripled to 150,000, according to the United Nations, with 230,000 people using opium in 2012.

Shah Marai / AFP/Getty

Images