The whole point of free speech is not to make ideas exempt from criticism but to expose them to it.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Don't pick up a weapon with which you are unfamiliar.
Over at Mt. Blogmore some person writing as DES is getting picked apart for his idiocy on medical cannabis. It's a pleasure to watch Bill Dithmer and Bear Creek Bat at work.
bcb reads like a lawyer, maybe a law professor. Dithmer? Independent South Dakotan, blind, maybe treating his glaucoma with a Schedule 1 drug. Yeah. He should be angry in the home of Janklow, Jackley, and Noem.
High Larry Kurtz I am blind but as of my last eye check up I don’t have a problem with glaucoma. If you really want to know why I have such a passion for the passage of medical marijuana legislation send me some email and I will tell you my story. cur@gwtc.net
I bet your story goes something like this, Bill Dithmer...
1. You know someone who suffers from a serious disease and found that marijuana works better to alleviate the symptoms of that disease than anything else.
2. You know said person is not lying to you, and has no interest in using marijuana to get high.
3. You are not a heartless, compassionless asshat.
Not hardly Neal part 1 Knowledge comes in two forms. There is second hand knowledge, the kind that you get from listening to other people talk about a subject. There is nothing wrong with that kind of knowledge if it is looked at from all sides and then evaluated, not just slanted in one direction and told as the absolute truth. All of us including myself are guilty of using second hand knowledge to tilt an argument in favor of the way we think. That doesn't make the conclusions we come to any more truthful. Then there is first hand knowledge. This kind of knowledge comes from personal experiences, research, and real life. There is no substitute for first hand knowledge. For me it was migraines, I started young about 11 years old. Uncontrollable, life stopping, sick, and yes crying migraines. I was born without the light filtering part of my eyes and several trips to Mayo and hundreds of test seem to say that condition had something to do with my problem. This was in the early sixties and options were few and those that worked were even fewer. At the end of each trip to Mayo I was given a list of drugs that might help. None of these made much of a dent in my headaches, some would dull the pain for a while and some, science found out later, caused more problems then they fixed. The only thing that did help were hypos. From 1966 until the early 80s I averaged one and a half hypos a week. I got damn good at using those hypos to get over my head problems. I would get a shot and a half hour later I would start to puke. Now I hate doing that as much as the next person but to get rid of the pain I would do anything. I repeat to get rid of the pain I would do anything! In high school I would find a way to feel some other kind of pain to take my mind off of the pain in my head. This included having my best friend beat on me. I didn't find out until about twenty years later that this wasn't uncommon.
Part 11 From the first pill that I ever took for migraines until today we have done some math and found out that I have taken right at 100,000 pills of one kind or another. In that time I have taken many experimental drugs, at least eight of these have now been banned for public use. None did anything to stop or even help me control the pain but like I said before when you are in pain you will try anything to do away with that pain. In the seventies after I had went to college for a couple of years I started with the help of my family a very successful dog breeding business and for several years had well over a hundred breeding females on the place at a time. Well time goes on for everyone and my help got older and one had cancer. I couldn't do 24/7/365 so I cut way back on the dogs. All of this time I continued to have migraines, get shots, and take pills. After all of those years of script drugs pain and puking I had decided that it was time to leave this world if I didn't find something that made a change in my life in a big way. I have hunted coon all of my adult life. Even when I was in pain it was something I could do at night and I was way more comfortable in the dark then any other time. One night a friend and I were setting in front of his house listening to the hounds work a track. We have known each other all of our lives and in a weak moment I told him what I had in mind. Well we set there without talking for a few minutes and then he looked at me and said “You stupid son of a bitch I wont let you do that” He then told me that I hadn't tried everything I could try not by a long ways. Then he got up walked into the house and when he came out he had a bong in his hand and a plate with pot on it. Now I had tried pot in college and it wasn't for me so I just left it at that but what did I have to loose at that point so off we went. Now this guy is smart he told me that from what he knew about weed the best approach would be to not get pie-eyed all the time but to smoke a little each day.
And Part111 You talk about a life changing experience. I had my last hypo two days before that night and I have never had to get one again, NEVER! I wont say that this is some kind of magic drug it didn't get rid of the pain, but it did make the pain so I could handle it without the number of hard drugs that I had used before. I also had full use of my body for all seven days of the week instead of four maybe five. I went from not knowing if I wanted to live to looking forward to each day and the day after that. I am proud to say that I am a productive member of this state. I have paid taxes all of my life and I don't have any children so I have helped a lot of your kids get an education through the property taxes that have left my bank. Let me address one more thing here THC in pill form. Been there done that. Lets just say that you can give the same dose to twenty different people and not one of them will react to the drug in the same way. In the first place it takes a long time for the THC to start to work, smoking is almost instantly noticeable. In the second place what might be just right for some in pill form is way way to much for someone else. Smoking gives the user a lot more control over the amount used. Well that about does it for me all that's left is the price that we pay to live within our pain. Whenever you break the law there is a price to pay. For some that price might be to high ,and ending their lives might be the right choice for them. For others like myself life is much better then what could have very easily been death. I have paid in my own way. I lost a sister who was a teacher of the year in SD and a brother in law. And I also lost a nephew who is a drug dog man because they would much rather I live with the pain then break the law. Pain is a funny thing it will make almost everyone break the law if the pain is bad enough and last long enough. Nuff Said
Great post Bill, I could care less what one takes if it makes them feel better and harms no one else. Hopefully voters will have enough compassion for folks like you regardless of how they feel about recreational marijuana use.
9 comments:
bcb reads like a lawyer, maybe a law professor. Dithmer? Independent South Dakotan, blind, maybe treating his glaucoma with a Schedule 1 drug. Yeah. He should be angry in the home of Janklow, Jackley, and Noem.
High Larry Kurtz I am blind but as of my last eye check up I don’t have a problem with glaucoma. If you really want to know why I have such a passion for the passage of medical marijuana legislation send me some email and I will tell you my story.
cur@gwtc.net
I bet your story goes something like this, Bill Dithmer...
1. You know someone who suffers from a serious disease and found that marijuana works better to alleviate the symptoms of that disease than anything else.
2. You know said person is not lying to you, and has no interest in using marijuana to get high.
3. You are not a heartless, compassionless asshat.
That seems to be the basic forumla.
Not hardly Neal part 1
Knowledge comes in two forms. There is second hand knowledge, the kind that you get from listening to other people talk about a subject. There is nothing wrong with that kind of knowledge if it is looked at from all sides and then evaluated, not just slanted in one direction and told as the absolute truth. All of us including myself are guilty of using second hand knowledge to tilt an argument in favor of the way we think. That doesn't make the conclusions we come to any more truthful. Then there is first hand knowledge. This kind of knowledge comes from personal experiences, research, and real life. There is no substitute for first hand knowledge.
For me it was migraines, I started young about 11 years old. Uncontrollable, life stopping, sick, and yes crying migraines. I was born without the light filtering part of my eyes and several trips to Mayo and hundreds of test seem to say that condition had something to do with my problem. This was in the early sixties and options were few and those that worked were even fewer. At the end of each trip to Mayo I was given a list of drugs that might help. None of these made much of a dent in my headaches, some would dull the pain for a while and some, science found out later, caused more problems then they fixed. The only thing that did help were hypos. From 1966 until the early 80s I averaged one and a half hypos a week. I got damn good at using those hypos to get over my head problems. I would get a shot and a half hour later I would start to puke. Now I hate doing that as much as the next person but to get rid of the pain I would do anything. I repeat to get rid of the pain I would do anything!
In high school I would find a way to feel some other kind of pain to take my mind off of the pain in my head. This included having my best friend beat on me. I didn't find out until about twenty years later that this wasn't uncommon.
Part 11
From the first pill that I ever took for migraines until today we have done some math and found out that I have taken right at 100,000 pills of one kind or another. In that time I have taken many experimental drugs, at least eight of these have now been banned for public use. None did anything to stop or even help me control the pain but like I said before when you are in pain you will try anything to do away with that pain.
In the seventies after I had went to college for a couple of years I started with the help of my family a very successful dog breeding business and for several years had well over a hundred breeding females on the place at a time. Well time goes on for everyone and my help got older and one had cancer. I couldn't do 24/7/365 so I cut way back on the dogs. All of this time I continued to have migraines, get shots, and take pills.
After all of those years of script drugs pain and puking I had decided that it was time to leave this world if I didn't find something that made a change in my life in a big way. I have hunted coon all of my adult life. Even when I was in pain it was something I could do at night and I was way more comfortable in the dark then any other time. One night a friend and I were setting in front of his house listening to the hounds work a track. We have known each other all of our lives and in a weak moment I told him what I had in mind. Well we set there without talking for a few minutes and then he looked at me and said “You stupid son of a bitch I wont let you do that” He then told me that I hadn't tried everything I could try not by a long ways. Then he got up walked into the house and when he came out he had a bong in his hand and a plate with pot on it. Now I had tried pot in college and it wasn't for me so I just left it at that but what did I have to loose at that point so off we went. Now this guy is smart he told me that from what he knew about weed the best approach would be to not get pie-eyed all the time but to smoke a little each day.
And Part111
You talk about a life changing experience. I had my last hypo two days before that night and I have never had to get one again, NEVER! I wont say that this is some kind of magic drug it didn't get rid of the pain, but it did make the pain so I could handle it without the number of hard drugs that I had used before. I also had full use of my body for all seven days of the week instead of four maybe five. I went from not knowing if I wanted to live to looking forward to each day and the day after that. I am proud to say that I am a productive member of this state. I have paid taxes all of my life and I don't have any children so I have helped a lot of your kids get an education through the property taxes that have left my bank.
Let me address one more thing here THC in pill form. Been there done that. Lets just say that you can give the same dose to twenty different people and not one of them will react to the drug in the same way. In the first place it takes a long time for the THC to start to work, smoking is almost instantly noticeable. In the second place what might be just right for some in pill form is way way to much for someone else. Smoking gives the user a lot more control over the amount used.
Well that about does it for me all that's left is the price that we pay to live within our pain. Whenever you break the law there is a price to pay. For some that price might be to high ,and ending their lives might be the right choice for them. For others like myself life is much better then what could have very easily been death. I have paid in my own way. I lost a sister who was a teacher of the year in SD and a brother in law. And I also lost a nephew who is a drug dog man because they would much rather I live with the pain then break the law.
Pain is a funny thing it will make almost everyone break the law if the pain is bad enough and last long enough. Nuff Said
Bill,
Thank you for sharing that.
Great post Bill, I could care less what one takes if it makes them feel better and harms no one else. Hopefully voters will have enough compassion for folks like you regardless of how they feel about recreational marijuana use.
Good testimony, Bill. Thanks.
And I am sure Ellis has copied your posts and is looking for your address to call your local cops.
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