Substance users, regardless of their wealth or lack there of, make a choice to pursue the use of their substances of choice. Sometimes people use substances for perfectly understandable reasons, sometimes people use substances for totally ludicrous reasons, some for a combo of both. If you support the employ of a supplier of your substance to ensure you receive and on-going supply of whatever substance you're using, be that a neighborhood dealer or shady Doctor, you are actively pursuing the use of the substance, regardless of any middle man.
It's an odd thing. A week ago, a man died on the playground a few houses away from mine, hairspray in hand. In an intoxicated state, the man had fallen, hit his head, and died from a combo of the trauma and the solvents in his system. This guy was one of the regular solvent users in my area, and they are all clearly getting their solvents (multiple empty bottles of the identical Finesse brand hairspray & store brand mouth wash litter the ground all around the park) from the same supplier. This is likely some mom & pop shop that is selling these products on the cheap, suspecting full well that the people purchasing them are not using them for their intended purpose. I do not deny that this sort of behavior waltzes on the line of moral ambiguity to a certain degree, same goes of MJ's doctor's activities, same goes for the friendly man who sells me enough alcohol to possibly kill me. So are these people murderers?
In the end, all I know is each person is blessed and cursed with choice. We choose to put things into our bodies, knowing full well that some of them are killing use, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly.
When it comes to Michael Jackson in particular, I've been disgusted with the media martyrdom from day one. The guy chose to stay in show biz, long after any family member could make him dance like a trained monkey. He chose to be flamboyant and to court the media. He chose to let young boys sleep in bed with him. He chose to spend exorbitant amounts of money. He chose to drastically alter his appearance. He chose to put drugs into his body. He had freedom of choice his entire adult life, and much more freedom of choice than most people enjoy due to wealth, fame, cultural prestige and power. The excuses, the back peddling and the footnoting we're getting exposed to on every news and entertainment channel about him is all pretty ugly to me. In the end, he was a person who had access to broad freedoms and opportunities, and faced with that, made a lot of unbelievably bad choices. I can understand that this gross and total loss of self perspective is epic in its proportions, and was, in a lurid car-crash sort of way fascinating, but that's not at all how it's being presented. It's like -- to use substance-use recovery speak -- the media continues to be an enabler by excusing and denying what are essentially self destructive choices made by a sick person. Ick. Not cool.
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Topic: Michael Jackson Murdered (Read 6109 times)