Posts Tagged ‘Drugs

02
Feb
09

The Toke of Hope

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: People We Like, Politics and Sports
Tags: , ,
  Michael Phelps
His abs still go on for days. Clearly he’s not a pothead. Who cares?
[www.thelifeofluxury.com]

Michael Phelps has smoked pot.

Next.

His swimming career will be unaffected, but he will probably lose endorsement money on this, which is a bummer, but only a temporary setback.

We’ve hung the hopes of a nation around his neck, weighing him down with each gold medal (as if his success has anything at all to do with me or you). How dare he betray us? How dare he be capable of error?

Whatever. Speaking of him strictly as a public figure, I’m glad. He may be a genetic freak marvel, born to torpedo through chlorinated waters and mug for the Wheaties box. He may have more focus and drive in one day of training than you or I could muster over a lifetime. But in a backward sort of way, his one-time-only (as far as we know) toke should give us all hope. It is proof positive that he is human — and that maybe we all have a shot. Any other attitude suggests staggering hypocrisy to me.

Barack Obama is another one we have built up to impossible heights. And he’s a smoker. Dirty, dirty smoker! A producer for This American Life recently begged the American public: Please do not, by public outcry and hypocritical posturing, drive those American Spirits from his lips! Barack Obama is a hero, a savior, an untouchable. We adore him because we are not like him. He is better than us.

Bullshit. He is us. And his clandestine tobacco habit proves it.

As our friend Judy Bernly once said, “I smoked a marijuana cigarette at a party once. I could never figure out what the big deal was.” One thing’s for sure: Phelps is a man, not a mouse. Well, he’s definitely not a wouse.

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08
May
07

Guerilla Catholicism

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Religion
Tags: , ,

Sometimes religion comes at you from the unlikeliest of places. We are accustomed to the subway preachers and the greeting card sermons of certain American heads of state and stumping political candidates. I see South Americans in my neighborhood cross themselves whenever we pass St. Joan of Arc on the bus. However, there are some places you just don’t expect to find it.

For example, the other day, my husband was paying for an Ambien prescription and was leaving the counter when the pharmacist asked him, “Are you Catholic?” Apparently she was tipped off by his last name.

Yes, he said, he was raised Catholic.

“Oh,” she said, “Well if you pray, you might try praying to the patron saint of sleepers.”

It was a sweet gesture, to be sure, meant in all earnestness and out of a sense of neighborliness, but I thought it a bit odd and maybe even ironic. I don’t consider it a resounding endorsement of the drugs she is dispensing when a pharmacist suggests dosages of prayer as treatment. I can imagine, in a generic way, that prayer and meditation might help bring the body to a calmed, centered state, better able to sleep than the stressed-out, jittery creatures we have become. But from the medical profession it sounds kinda like: Give it up, buddy. Better start saying your prayers.

It was a saint he had not heard of. (There are so many of them.) After a little bit of research, all I could find was the legend of St. Dymphna. Her name is occasionally invoked, apparently, in matters of sleep disorder.

Hers is another one of those heartwarming tales of human misery so popular among we Catholics. Family values stuff. Her mother dies, and her father is unable to remarry to his satisfaction. He takes a fancy to her, she being the next best thing genetically, and tries to rape her. When she refuses him and fights back, he kills her in a rage.

I guess what we learn from these stories is that it could always be worse. That must be where we derive the comfort of prayer. I can’t sleep, but it’s not like my dad is trying to do me. So … who am I to complain? Let’s just see what’s on TV.

the untallied hours