Past and Future Comment from A Heroine

An Update from Jennifer Collett

May She Long Continue!

Take a Stroll With a Friend

My name is Jennifer Collett. Every year I walk 134 kms from Peterborough Ontario to Queens Park in Toronto. I do this to show the medical and political institutions a working model of cannabinoid therapy, that enables extreme levels of activity. I also do this to support those who wonder if it might work for them to show them how it can.

You may think, "so what, lots of people do that." The truth is, they don't. This has been an incredible effort and well worth the journey every year. I couldn't have achieved this before I was able to use cannabis medicines consistently. I am a mother of 5, a wife and a normal everyday gal. I am no athlete, and manage my own health issues in the best way I can. This is one reason it is so important for me to walk. It shows that normal people use this medicine and contradict the stigma.

Over the past three years of doing this, we have walked a stride for every registered patient in Canada, and more. Every year we walk for a particular issue also. This is our 4th year and we will be raising awareness for Pediatric Cannabis Therapies and the kids who cant afford to wait. We need this medicine covered under the provincial formulary to increase access to something that IS saving lives.

Some of you may know that I am also the Executive Director of the Canadian Medical Cannabis Partners. We are a National organization of patients and caregivers who volunteer our time to changing the ways patients are affected by the system. We lobby provincial and federal government to manage our medical cannabis program under healthcare, where it belongs, as the natural, efficacious and safe medicine that it is.
We bring forward the evidence needed to discuss provincial management, and offer effective inexpensive and healthier solutions that complement the transitioning federal program.

For those of you who don't know, The Medical Marihuana Production Regulations that came into effect on March 31 2014, removed the right by policy, of 40,000 patients on fixed incomes or in various stages of chronic illness or end of life care, to stop growing in their legal gardens. (They were expected to destroy what they feel is saving their life.) Thousands of people, some patients and some who are privately and compassionately growing for patients who cannot grow their own medicine, risk arrest in our communities. This will be paid for by our community policing budgets. It will create a burden on our local healthcare systems, as well as our Social services as families are put into distress.

The "System" is how we the people are informed of what is available to us. From human rights to dental coverage, to restrictions and barriers, we must learn to negotiate this in order to have our needs met. We pay our taxes, most attend regular doctor’s appointments, pay our bills, and do our best to put food on the tables for our families. We follow the set of regulations dictating conduct in our society, until it becomes dangerous to us. The law is not intended to put anyone in harm’s way. Laws are not created to do harm in themselves. So, we must learn to negotiate the legislation causing the harm and have it changed in a way that works for all, not some.

The inclusion of cannabis medicines in the Formulary would increase access for our entire population.

The continued personal production that is inspected and regulated is far less expensive than the new program.

Through education and research we have learned of the essential nature of our endocannabinoid system. We must recognize and train our medical practitioners and reflect that in our requirements for medical practice. We must ensure that patients best interests are protected in the development of policy around cannabis in front line care. We must ensure access to the ability to make our medicine into healthier and more effective forms of administration. We must provide protection from the ignorance of the traditional western medical establishment; recognize that cannabis is one of the oldest, most effective, and least invasive forms of treatment for many illnesses, while ensuring there is a regulated quality control.

Affordability is a factor we cannot get around. So either we pay for it in our healthcare, or we request a section 56 for the province of Ontario to accept the download of the medical cannabis program. The alternative to not pre-emptively managing this situation is paying for it through our taxes with policing, housing inmates, court expense, social services, as well as the destruction of lives of thousands of people and their families.
This is how it becomes downloaded to the municipalities also. Every city has tax paying citizens, who pay for a large percentage of the local policing budget. Our taxes go up to the top and trickle back down through transfers. What the police require to do their jobs, is based on current legislation, whether harmful or not.

Current legislation is based on political relationships and aren’t always in the best interests of the people paying for them. Current policies around cannabis are an example of this.

Personal beliefs remain the right of the holder, however one must recognize that others also have personal beliefs, therefor they must also be considered. Speaking to the belief that cannabis should be accessible as medicine for those who need it, we continue to work to educate government, healthcare providers and our communities of the benefits of this medicine.

Please join us September 26-29th for the Cannabian FreedomWalk 2014, as we take strides to further Cannabis Education in our shared community.

Thank You and I will see you on the fly!!
Jennifer

The Return of Al Gore to the Circus

The Turning Point: New Hope for the Climate

It's time to accelerate the shift toward a low-carbon future

This is almost sheer plagiarism in that it is a condensation of a 6000+ word column in the Rolling Stone by Former US Vice President Al Gore on June 18, 2014 9:00 AM ET.

 It can be seen in its entirety at

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-turning-point-new-hope-for-the-climate-20140618

I stole it because it is a ray of hope that everyone should read but won’t: primarily because of its length. I chopped out the excess verbiage and shrank it to 2750 which is still long but a hell of a lot easier to read. Please do so!

It’s an important analysis of what Global Warming is bringing to this earth in the not too long different future that he describes in an excellent presentation of interlocking events to come.

To Begin

In the struggle to solve the climate crisis, the only question is how quickly we can accelerate and complete the transition to a low-carbon civilization. Al Gore has come to believe the truly catastrophic damages that have the potential for ending civilization as we know it can still – almost certainly – be avoided. Moreover, the pace of the changes already set in motion can still be moderated significantly. The cost of electricity from photovoltaic, or PV, solar cells is now equal to or less than the cost of electricity from other sources. By 2020 more than 80 percent of the world's people will live in regions where solar will be competitive with electricity from other sources.

There is a huge difference between "more expensive than" and "cheaper than.

Germany, Europe's industrial powerhouse now generates 37 percent of its daily electricity from wind and solar; Germany's two largest coal-burning utilities have lost 56 percent of their value over the past four years, and the losses have continued into the first half of 2014. According to the Swiss bank UBS, nine out of 10 European coal and gas plants are now losing money

Last May, Barclays downgraded the entirety of the U.S. electric sector, warning that "a confluence of declining cost trends in distributed solar ­photovoltaic-power generation and residential­ scale power storage is likely to disrupt the status quo" and make utility investments less attractive.

The widespread belief that natural gas will continue to be the chosen alternative to coal is mistaken, because it too will fall victim to the continuing decline in the cost of solar and wind electricity and the cost of battery storage has also been declining 

Enough raw energy reaches the Earth from the sun in one hour

To equal

All of the energy used by the entire world in a full year.

In poorer countries, photovoltaic electricity is not so much displacing carbon-based energy as leapfrogging it altogether. The newly elected prime minister of India announced a stunning plan to rely principally upon photovoltaic energy in providing electricity to 400 million Indians who currently do not have it. The former utility regulator of India, added that the industry he once oversaw "has reached a stage where either we change the whole system quickly, or it will collapse." Bangladesh is installing nearly two new rooftop PV systems every minute — making it the most rapidly growing market for PVs in the world.

Some scoffed at projections that the world would be installing one gigawatt of new solar electricity per year by 2010 but this year the world is on pace to exceed that benchmark 17 times  and expected to reach as much as 55 times over in the near future. The cost of solar electricity has dropped by an average of 20 percent per year since 2010. Some energy economists are now predicting energy-price deflation as soon as the next decade.

The cost of wind energy is also plummeting, having dropped 43 percent in the United States since 2009 – making it now cheaper than coal for new generating capacity. In the United States alone, nearly one-third of all new electricity-generating capacity in the past five years has come from wind, and installed wind capacity in the U.S. has increased more than fivefold since 2006.

There is precedence for the speed with which this impending transition has been accelerating that help explain it. Remember the first mobile-telephone handsets?

In 1980, a AT&T conducted a global market study and came to the conclusion that by the year 2000 there would be a market for 900,000 subscribers. They were way wrong: 109 million contracts were active in 2000. Barely a decade and a half later, there are 6.8 billion globally. 


The Opposition

The utilities are fighting back, of course, by using their wealth and the entrenched political power they have built up over the past century. In the United States, brothers Charles and David Koch, who run Koch Industries, the second-largest privately owned corporation in the U.S., have secretively donated at least $70 million to a number of opaque political organizations tasked with spreading disinformation about the climate crisis and intimidating political candidates who dare to support renewable energy or the pricing of carbon pollution. One of the most effective of the groups financed by the Koch brothers is the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which grooms conservative state legislators throughout the country to act as their agents in introducing legislation written by utilities and carbon-fuel lobbyists. The Kochs claim to act on principles of low taxation and minimal regulation, but in their attempts to choke the development of alternative energy, they have focused on persuading state legislatures and public-utility commissions to tax homeowners who install a PV solar cell on their energy in a variety of novel schemes.

The Koch brothers are losing rather badly. In Kansas, their home state, 91 percent of registered voters support solar and wind. In Georgia, the Atlanta Tea Party joined forces with the Sierra Club to form a new organization called – wait for it – the Green Tea Coalition, which promptly defeated a Koch-funded scheme to tax rooftop solar panels. Meanwhile, in Arizona, after the state's largest utility asked for a tax of up to $150 per month for solar households, A compromise was worked out – those households would be charged just $5 per month. The Koch brothers and their allies have been using secretive and deceptive funding in Arizona to run television advertisements attacking "greedy" owners of rooftop solar panels – but their effort has thus far backfired, as local journalists have exposed the funding scam.

Last year, the Edison Electric Institute warned the utility industry that it had waited too long to respond to the sharp cost declines and growing popularity of solar: "At the point when utility investors become focused on these new risks and start to witness significant customer- and earnings-erosion trends, they will respond to these

The most seductive argument deployed by the Koch brothers and their allies is that those who use rooftop solar electricity and benefit from the net-metering policies are "free riders". The second reality ignored by the Koch brothers is the one they least like to discuss, What about sewage infrastructure for 98 million tons per day of gaseous, heat-trapping waste that is daily released into our skies, threatening the future of human civilization? Is it acceptable to use the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet as an open sewer? Free of charge? Really?

Last April, the average CO2 concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere exceeded 400 parts-per-million on a sustained basis: the highest in 4.5 million years (a period that was considerably warmer than at present). The accumulated man-made global-warming pollution already built up in the Earth's atmosphere now traps as much extra heat energy every day as would be released by the explosion of 400,000 Hiroshima-class nuclear bombs. It is that heat energy that is giving the Earth a fever and thirteen of the 14 hottest years ever measured with instruments have occurred in this century. Many scientists expect the coming year could break all of these records with a boost from the anticipated El Niño. The past decade was by far the warmest decade ever measured and it is the heat absorbed by the oceans that is the cause of the four dangers we now face: Storms, Sea-level rise, Floods, and Droughts.

Kevin Trenberth said, "The environment in which all storms form has changed owing to human activities."

Storms

Supertyphoon Haiyan crossed the Pacific and gained strength across seas that were 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they used to be because of greenhouse ­gas pollution

Superstorm Sandy traversed the areas of the Atlantic Ocean in 2012, the water temperature was nine degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal and the sea level was higher than it used to be, elevated by the melting of ice

Similarly, the inundation of Miami Beach by rising sea levels has now begun, and freshwater aquifers in low-lying areas from South Florida to the Nile Delta to Bangladesh to Indochina are being invaded by saltwater pushed upward by rising oceans. Where will the climate refugees go?

Eighty percent of the warming in the past 150 years (since the burning of carbon-based fuels gained momentum) has occurred in the past few decades. The AAAS noted this year "there is a possibility that temperatures will rise much higher and impacts will be much worse than expected. Moreover, as global temperature rises, the risk increases that one or more important parts of the Earth's climate system will experience changes that may be abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible, causing large damages and high costs."

Sea-level Rise

The long-feared "collapse" of a portion of the West Antarctic ice sheet is not only under way but is also now "irreversible” and some people still find it hard to accept the fact that human beings have become a sufficiently powerful force of nature to reshape the ecological system. No matter what we do, sea levels will rise by at least an additional three feet and the Greenland ice sheet dissolving will contribute to significantly more sea-level rise than scientists had previously thought.

The heating of the oceans also evaporates around 2 trillion gallons of additional water vapor into the skies: where it is funneled into land-based storms that are releasing record downpours all over the world.

Floods

Nashville in May 2010.

Torrential rains in Afghanistan in April triggered mudslides that killed thousands of people.

An “April shower" came to Pensacola, Florida, this spring: two feet of rain in 26 hours.

Flooding swamped large portions of England this winter, Serbia and Bosnia this spring.

Droughts

In the planet's drier regions, the same extra heat causes record-breaking droughts. As of this writing, 100 percent of California is in "severe," "extreme" or "exceptional" drought. Record fires are ravaging the desiccated landscape.

Syria- From 2006 to 2010, a historic drought destroyed 60 percent of the country's farms and 80 percent of its livestock. Syria warned us the social and economic impacts of the drought are "beyond our capacity as a country to deal with."

There are so many knock-on consequences of the climate crisis that listing them can be depressing – diseases spreading, crop yields declining, more heat waves affecting vulnerable and elderly populations, the disappearance of summer-ice cover in the Arctic Ocean, the potential extinction of up to half of all the living species, and so much more. And that in itself is a growing problem too, because when you add it all up, it's no wonder that many feel a new inclination to despair.
Last March, a Pentagon advisory committee described the climate crisis as a "catalyst for conflict" that may well cause failures of governance and societal collapse. Air Force Gen. Charles F. Wald. "Now we're saying it's going to be a direct cause of instability." Pentagon spokesman Mark Wright told the press, "For DOD, this is a mission reality, not a political debate. The scientific forecast is for more Arctic ice melt, more sea-level rise, more intense storms, more flooding from storm surge and more drought."

In November 1936, Winston Churchill in the face of disaster said: "Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger. . . . The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays is coming to its close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences. . . . We cannot avoid this period; we are in it now."

The Capitalization of Democracy

Democracy is accepted in theory by more people than ever before as the best form of political organization, but it has been "hacked" by large corporations (defined as "persons" by the Supreme Court) and special interests corrupting the political system with obscene amounts of money (defined as "speech" by the same court).
Capitalism, for its part, is accepted by more people than ever before as a superior form of economic organization, but is – in its current form – failing to measure and include the categories of "value" that are most relevant to the solutions we need in order to respond to this threatening crisis (clean air and water, safe food, a benign climate balance, public goods like education and a greener infrastructure, etc.).
Pressure for meaningful reform in democratic capitalism is beginning to build powerfully. The progressive introduction of Internet-based communication  is laying the foundation for the renewal of individual participation in democracy, and the re-elevation of reason over wealth and power as the basis for collective decision ­making. And the growing levels of inequality worldwide, combined with growing structural unemployment and more frequent market disruptions (like the Great Recession), are building support for reforms in capitalism.
We need to establish "green banks" that provide access to capital investment necessary to develop: renewable energy, an electrified transportation fleet, the retrofitting of buildings to reduce wasteful energy consumption, and the full integration of sustainability in the design and architecture of cities and towns. While the burning of fossil fuels is the largest cause of the climate crisis, deforestation and "factory farming" also play an important role. Financial and technological approaches to addressing these challenges are emerging, but we must continue to make progress in converting to sustainable forestry and agriculture.

The Politics of It All

In order to accomplish these policy shifts, we must not only put a price on carbon in markets, but also find a way to put a price on climate denial in our politics. We already know the reforms that are needed – and the political will to enact them is a renewable resource. Yet the necessary renewal can only come from an awakened citizenry

Three years ago, in these pages, I criticized President Obama for his hesitation at the disastrous meeting in Copenhagen four and a half years ago, but now it is abundantly evident that he has taken hold of the challenge with determination and seriousness of purpose. The president is clearly changing his overall policy emphasis to make CO2 reductions a much higher priority now and has made a series of inspiring speeches that should guarantee a good reception at the meeting in Paris at the end of 2015
And there are signs that a way forward may be opening up. In May, I attended a preparatory session in Abu Dhabi, UAE, to bolster commitments from governments, businesses and nongovernmental organizations ahead of this September's U.N. Climate Summit. There were welcome changes in rhetoric, and it was clear that the reality of the climate crisis is now weighing on almost every nation. Moreover, there were encouraging reports from around the world that many of the policy changes necessary to solve the crisis are being adopted piecemeal by a growing number of regional, state and city governments.
I believe there is a realistic hope that momentum toward a global agreement will continue to build in September and carry through to the Paris negotiations in late 2015. I am among the growing number of people who are allowing themselves to become more optimistic than ever that a bold and comprehensive pact may well emerge from the Paris negotiations late next year, which many regard as the last chance to avoid our civilization’s catastrophe while there is still time.

It will be essential for the United States and other major historical emitters cooperate and that is a beginning:

1.    European Union has announced its commitment to achieve a 40-percent reduction

2.    Finland has pledged to reduce emissions 80 percent by 2050

3.    China's new president, Xi Jinping is changing things and China and the U.S. have jointly reached an important agreement to limit another potential threat.

4.    The prime minister of India announced the world's most ambitious plan to accelerate the transition to solar electricity.

There is indeed, literally, light at the end of the tunnel, but there is a tunnel, and we are well into it.

The End

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Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

Mother and Child Devotion

Mother and Child

The Nearest Thing to a Cuddle She Can Do!

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Clean-up Time

Hoping you liked this

Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

WHY THE WORLD IS DYING

GOD JUST WASHED HIS HANDS

THE BIBLE HAD IT WRONG

Another Interpretation of Genesis

By TheSmeeGoanGuy

God and Creation

All we know about Creation and God is from the memory of Adam: the first guy to rub shoulders with him. God told Adam that he had created the world as a self sustaining paradise. Adam was taught to believe God was infallible, but he had it all wrong.

God knew from previous experience that one or twice, in another eternity even HE had made a couple of very minor errors but that was not going to happen this time!

God checked out the Paradise he had created and it was Perfect!

But?

He knew it was a googol to one shot but if it ever needed tending? On the spur of the moment he created Adam and Eve and the ability to have offspring. These would be the custodians and caretakers for his paradise and nothing could ever go wrong because they and their children would be there to repair it if it did!

His project completed, he had a couple of words of parting advice with Adam and Eve and told them not to screw up because

“VENGEANCE IS MINE”.

He left in a flash of Lightning with Thunder for emphasis.

He’d be back in a million years or so to check up on things.

Unfortunately in his snap creation he made three minor errors.

1.    He made them with Brains

2.    He made them with Greed

3.    He made them like Fucking

Big Mistake!

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I think God came back about 50 years ago!

HE WAS NOT PLEASED

He sat down on the moon and took a good hard look at Earth

His Perfect Paradise!

He could almost see through the haze!

He could hear the screams of victims!

He could almost smell the pollution!

He wanted VENGEANCE

He sat there a long time considering what options he had.

There really wasn’t much more punishment to inflict.

They were already heading for a Hell they created!

He decided to do nothing!

Just let them learn

Whatsoever a man soweth,

that shall he also reap.

At that point I think he just took a walk.

My Name is Jennifer Collett

Who is this Jennifer?

She’s a Real Friend!

She works her butt off and asks for no thanks.

I asked her to post this because she has a broader view than I do.

She provides a fresh perspective to on the Marijuana Mess.

She can speak for herself !

 

My name is Jennifer Collett. I am the Executive Director of the Canadian Medical Cannabis Partners. We are an organization of patients and caregivers who volunteer our time to changing the ways patients are affected by the system. We lobby provincial and federal government to manage our medical cannabis program under healthcare, where it belongs, as the natural, efficacious and safe medicine that it is.

We bring forward the evidence needed to discuss provincial management, and offer effective inexpensive and healthier solutions that complement the transitioning federal program. This new design really only changed the economics of cannabis distribution, while excluding the people who need to benefit from the medicine, turning it into a product.

The Medical Marihuana Production Regulations that come into effect on March 31 2014, will remove the right by policy, of 40,000 patients on fixed incomes or in various stages of chronic illness or end of life care, to stop growing in their legal gardens. (They will be expected to destroy what they feel is saving their life.) Thousands of people, some patients and some who are privately and compassionately growing for patients who cannot grow their own medicine, will be arrested in our communities. This will be paid for by our community policing budgets. It will create a burden on our local healthcare systems, as well as our Social services as families are put into distress. This will be caused by a policy change, that in reality is about money and monopoly of a medicine, not regulation and increased medical access.

I raise this point because, in no place in this new program is there any consideration for a patients financial ability to cover their own healthcare, while the rest of the country is accessing medical coverage in favour of pharmaceutical treatments. There was no risk involved in patient gardens. There are risks involved in the black market. Patients are not involved in the black market. Patients are growing and doing whatever they can to stay alive and healthy.
We all know there is a black market. I do not suggest that some people have not abused their prescription growing rights. Some of these abuses were indeed contributing to the black market, however most patients have seen the stigma attached to cannabis, for too long. They are not interested in sharing that they use this as medicine, most don’t even tell those closest to them. Of course many people enjoy it, it is most often a pleasurable experience, why wouldn’t they. We have the ability to enjoy a beer in this country also, not everyone is a bootlegger or abuser.

The System is how we the people are informed of what is available to us. From human rights to dental coverage, to restrictions and barriers, we must learn to negotiate this in order to have our needs met. We pay our taxes, most attend regular doctor’s appointments, pay our bills, and do our best to put food on the tables for our families. We follow the set of regulations dictating conduct in our society, until it becomes dangerous to us. The law is not intended to put anyone in harm’s way. Laws are not created to do harm in themselves. So, we must learn to negotiate the legislation causing the harm and have it changed in a way that works for all, not some.

This can be done through a provincial management of Cannabis medicines in the following ways.

The administration and delivery of health care services is the responsibility of each province or territory, guided by the provisions of the Canada Health Act. The provinces and territories fund these services with assistance from the federal government in the form of fiscal transfers. The inclusion of cannabis medicines in the Formulary will increase access for our entire provincial population. The inclusion of continued personal production that is inspected and regulated is far less expensive.

Health care services include insured primary health care (such as the services of physicians and other health professionals) and care in hospitals, which account for the majority of provincial and territorial health expenditures. Through education and research we have learned of the essential nature of our endocannabinoid system. We must recognize and train our medical practitioners and reflect that in our requirements for medical practice. We must ensure that patients best interests are protected in the development of policy around cannabis in front line care. We must ensure access to the ability to make our medicine into healthier and more effective forms of administration. We must provide protection from the ignorance of the traditional western medical establishment; recognize that cannabis is one of the oldest, most effective, and least invasive forms of treatment for many illnesses, while ensuring there is a regulated quality control. The provinces and territories also provide some groups with supplementary health benefits not covered by the Act, such as prescription drug coverage. Here is an example of a budget that exists for just this issue in Ontario.

Affordability is a factor we cannot get around. So either we pay for it in our healthcare, or we request a section 56 for the province of Ontario to accept the download of the medical cannabis program. The alternative to not pre-emptively managing this situation is paying for it through our taxes with policing, housing inmates, court expense, social services, as well as the destruction of lives of thousands of people and their families.

This is how it becomes downloaded to the municipalities also. Every city has tax paying citizens, who pay for a large percentage of the local policing budget. Our taxes go up to the top and trickle back down through transfers. What the police require to do their jobs, is based on current legislation, whether harmful or not. Current legislation is based on political relationships and aren’t always in the best interests of the people paying for them. Current policies around cannabis are an example of this.
I am not talking about anything but medical need here. Personal beliefs remain the right of the holder, however one must recognize that others also have personal beliefs, therefor they must also be considered. Speaking to the belief that cannabis should be accessible as medicine for those who need it, we have worked to educate government, healthcare providers and our communities alike, of the benefits of a provincial managed medical cannabis program.

I Just Avoided Disaster

I Ran Out of Pot

but

I Got Creative and Diverted Disaster

I have Depression andI had a major problem with my pot supply this week. I use pot to keep a lid on my mood and this is a crisis

I am happy to report that my pot crisis is over. I ran out day before yesterday and yesterday was no fun because I could feel my depression setting in and my mood changing as time passed. I too am a casualty of the Down East Freeze. My shipment of super pot from Toronto is stuck and I was facing a whole week shortfall this morning.

In panic and in search od some secret stash I had forgotten I ran across a bag of twigs and stems I had considered using to make oil. They were small twigs and stems, drier than hell and tough as rocks but they were covered with hard little green balls of leaf and resin. I needed a toke badly so I got my mortar and pestle and I pounded the hell out of a pile of lumber bigger than my fist until it was reduced to shreds and then ran it through a sieve.

I got ½ a cup of fine leaf and resin that I proceeded to pestle 200 strokes into a fine powder. I put a pinch in my pipe and did a good hit. Great Jumpin Jesus! A miracle: Really good and I’m back to normal in no time flat and I’m looking at about a two week supply of some pretty decent hoot. My panic vanished.

I decide to tell you about all this because a FB friend sent me a link to an article on FB by a girl, no a mature woman, describing her problems with depression. It was excellent and I could relate to her. I also realized that of all the other readers of her story very few understood what depression really is and what she was talking about. The simple fact is that if you haven’t been there, or been very close to someone who is, you can’t know.

What follows is my story of my relationship with Depression

1.    How I got it.

2.    What I learned it is,

3.    What it did to me,

4.    How it changed me, and

5.    The person I am becoming because of it.

I have become very conscious of how my mind works and I can detect when trouble is brewing. After two days abstinence before I created my miracle cure all the alarms were going and I was extremely concerned about what was ahead for the next couple of days.

I have learned to watch myself in my head and I can see my brain going negative, from creative thinking about my blog and what I was going to do next; to the now, today and all the problems I have in life. I can control this by using my soapstone pipe and taking teeny weeny little one puff tokes like every half hour from from 5AM to 11PM; it levels me out and I get through the day without a hell of a lot of problems. It really is amazing how the first little toke can change my whole mood in about 5 minutes, even less depending on the potency of the pot.

I’ve run out of pot on a couple of occasions and that is not good because it’s a nasty downhill slope to the bottom of the hole and I don’t want to go there but, if it keeps developing, that is where I’m heading. It’s almost predictable in its development and fortunately I’ve only been out for a short time, about three days.

Even in that time you can go from thinking about your problems and the blame game starts: you start to feel responsible for an increasing number of fuckups in your past life. That’s not too bad but if you lose it here, you start blaming yourself for imaginary fuckups that were never your fault but; you remember every bad turn in your life and you start asking yourself  “What if I has only done this? You don’t know the answer but you assume the result would have solved the problem and you start feeling guilty for your sin of omission and on and on until every waking hour is devoted to hating yourself for destroying a mostly imaginary life. You hit the bottom of the hole when you lose hope of ever forgiving yourself and getting back to normal. Thank Christ I’ve only hit bottom once when I crashed in 1999. I avoided it again today when I created a supply of pot.

What Happened To Me

When I crashed in Sept 1999 I hadn’t worked I over a year and a half, had a work accident and ruptured a disc at L4/5 six months previously, weighed 289 lbs. and was completely out of physical shape.. I was sent to a WCB Occupational Rehab Program with extreme demands and collapsed half way through the second day of a four hour exercise program. I was sent to Surrey Memorial Hospital, a suspected heart attack but I had none. I was lucky that my heart specialist was very perceptive an noticed my downcast appearance. At an office visit one week after discharge he asked me to write a very quick test of 30 questions that took less than 2 minutes to answer: As quick as you can, read each question and don’t think, just check the yes or no answer box. I scored an amazing 27 out of the 30 and was very proud until he told me that it was a test for Depression and any score over 15 was bad news. He made a phone call and I walked down the street to see a Psychiatrist a half hour later.

Apparently most depression is the result of a problem with Serotonin, a hormone that controls your moods and their intensity. I can’t remember which gland makes it but nobody knows what goes wrong and there is no cure. Fortunately there are now a number of drug treatments that will help but everybody reacts differently and what will work with you is a psychiatrist guess game. I was lucky to be put on a drug called Serzone, an SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) immediately and it worked for me. Unfortunately for a lot of depressed patients finding the right drug for them can be a trial and error effort that lasts for years of ups and downs and that can be completely disabling.

I hit bottom about a month after diagnosis of depression and it took me about six month to get back to near normal. In April 2000 I was diagnosed as having a Major Depressive Disorder Recurrent and I had several bad spells over the next two or three years. I have been spell free for the past 7 or 8 years but the worst result was discovering that I was doubly depressed and had Dysthymia, a low grade chronic depression that lasts forever in some instances. It’s not so bad being gloomy all the time but for me it meant the complete loss of interest and ability to do everything that I enjoyed and made my life worth while.

What I Lost to Dysthymia

I bought my first guitar from the T. Eaton Company catalog for $5 when I was 8 and my Mom taught me to play it first as a steel guitar on my lap then as a rhythm guitar and I finally would up as a pretty good bluegrass finger picker. I was a Burl Ives fan and a good singer of his songs and other ballads and I loved to party and entertain. I knew a hundred dirty jokes and songs and I ran with a beer loving crowd of buddies.

I bought my current guitar in 1968 and it’s a pretty rare Canadian Espana guitar made for the T. Eaton Company by a Finnish guitar manufacturer out of specially provided Canadian woods. It’s a classical style guitar but I discovered its body is a little larger and its got a slightly softer deeper tone. Its my baby!

My guitar has sat in the closet for 15 years now with only the occasional attempt to play. I pulled it out about three months ago intending to get back into playing and discovered rusty fingers and a voice that hasn’t been used in years. I’ve been looking at the damned thing in the corner and wondering what to do.

What is the point of playing again? Right now, none! The only audience I have is you my readers and the only entertainment I can share with you is my Joke Collection. They are the best 70 jokes that I have collected over the past 50 years and I managed to post them as a blog to share at TheYarnBarn.Blogspot.ca/. Take a peek when you need a grin. I recommend the following

The Runaway sermon at Crestmont Methodist

http://theyarnbarn.blogspot.ca/2007/06/runaway-sermon-at-crestmont-methodist.html

The moral of the story:  

Don’t piss off the Preacher

I can read 1250 words per minute and I was a compulsive reader. I began reading Zane Grey when I was about ten, in bed at Granddads farmhouse at night by kerosene lantern light. I absorbed the Code of the West and his hero gunfighter’s penchant for pursuing justice. By the time I was 15 I had read every book in the Fort Saskatchewan town and school libraries and took the bus to Edmonton to trade for another load of fiction and fantasy every weekend. My favorites are probably James Clavell, Wilbur Smith, Jeffery Archer Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy.

I loved books, good movies and TV series that primarily featured characters who overcame great and complex difficulties in the course of their lives. Through the exercise of good character, determination and courage they overcame their problems.

I have not read a book for at least the last ten years. I have the same problem with movies and TV. I try and I get not even a quarter ways through and I’ve just lost interest in these heroes and their problems. Who gives a shit? I’ve got problems of my own and she is watching me right now. LOL

I AVOIDED DISASTER

Up until two years ago I was in total isolation in my room unless I was at work afternoons as a Security Guard watching a bank. I had no beer, no buddies, no social circle at all. My wife was totally unaware of how depressed I was but I damned near hit the bottom of the barrel again and on the way to work just before Christmas I was indulging in suicidal ideation about how I should kill myself. I got a wake up call. I was on River Road and wanted to turn left onto Nordel Way.  I waited until the last truck cleared the orange light, turned left and was T-boned in the passenger door by a kid in a pickup truck trying to beat the light. He was going really fast and spun me around 270 degrees and landed me up on top of the lane divider about 12“higher than the road.

I was lucky I wasn’t killed. I lost consciousness for a very short time but hardly had a scratch: a badly bruised set of right side ribs but nothing else. I was taken to hospital, x-rayed and released with an Rx for pain pills. For some strange reason pot didn’t help with that rib pain and it always was like a stab in the side that took forever to quit hurting every time I coughed or farted or laughed.for two months. It was a wakeup call that it just wasn’t my time to croak. Fate, Kharma, who the hell knows, but the Big Boy didn’t want me yet..

I was familiar to a certain degree about the problems with Medical Marijuana and had some nasty relationships with the MMAD and I decided that if I was stuck here, something had to change, and that was me. Jan 1. I decided to help so I started this blog on Jan 1, 2012.

January 27, I read of the Kamermans bust and I decided to become an advocate for him and that expanded to my current range of interests.

I owe much of my recovery to you commenting readers for feedback that let me know that I am doing some good work and have helped some people. That has provided the incentive and motivation to make more changes and get back to the party animal I was. I have plans for Youtube to play and sing two very good not quite dirty songs that I want to get credit for. I have no idea where they came from but they popped into my head 40 years ago and I think they qualify as Classic Country, Just the title and chorus of each will give you a pretty good idea of what is going to come if I can get my new webcam working and learn to warble and pick again:

.

The first is called:

                                              FLATTULENCE

and its chorus goes:

FART! FART! FART! FART!

Whistle, Bang or Wheeze

Odorous and Awful now

It’s floating on the breeze

The second is called:

THE SHITHOUSE ON THE FARM

and its chorus goes

It’s that little white building by the barn

It’s the most important building on the farm

Where I used to sit at ease

With my elbows on my knees

In that little white building by the barn

Playing them at my funeral would make that a perfect send off, 

everybody would be singing along and stomping their feet.

The last two years of Facebook and the Blog have made a huge change in my mood and outlook and I hope to continue to grow more. It is a remarkable turnaround from shame to once again feeling some self esteem and actually feeling proud of myself for what I have managed to do.

So onward and upward with the Don Quixote imitation and the Code of the West belief. You charge the goddamn windmill and then when you get close enough to see the occupant you quick draw your pistol and shoot the bastard between the eyes before he can shoot you.

(Standard Police Procedure: Claim Self Defense) 

Unfortunately there is no shortage of damsels in distress around here with grow-ops to save and I expect to be busy!

That is my story and how I got here and nobody knows where I’m going until I write my next post.

Until then

Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy