"I've had some killer times on drugs."
Bill Hicks
Most people have seen The Deer Hunter at least .7 times. What they may not know is that the movie is based on a lost Rembrandt painting titled "The Fentanyl Den," which depicts several people in a Southeast Asian hellhole gambling with their lives. Director Michael Cimino bought the rights to the story from some guy in an alley behind a Vietnamese whorehouse, which is the last known location of the painting itself. The famous "Russian Roulette" scene from The Deer Hunter is a cinematic recreation of "The Fentanyl Den," which was painted by Gunnery Sergeant Joe Rembrandt in 1968. Nobody except Michael Cimino and the Vietcong have ever seen the actual painting, but most people are familiar with the scene in the film. In it, 2 Caucasian gentlemen from halfway around the world engage in a deadly game of recreational drug use.
Of course, since the movie is based on a painting titled "The Fentanyl Den," Michael Cimino had to make sure that 5 of the 6 cylinders of the recreational smoking implements were loaded, so that the protagonists only had a 17% chance of survival.
In a real game of Russian Roulette, 5 of the 6 cylinders would have been empty, but since Fentanyl was involved, it was now a game of Chinese/Sinaloan Roulette, and thus became necessary to flip the ratio so that certain death was almost guaranteed.
All joking aside, I'm not kidding. 25 years ago, there was a recurring ad on the Chicago subway which read, "Just because you survived drugs, doesn't mean your kids will." Texas Pictures Documentaries' YouTube channel is full of stories of kids who died from Fentanyl. It's a harrowing, heartbreaking epidemic. Thanks to China by way of the Mexican drug cartels, the days of "recreational drug use" are over.
Go to their channel, and watch it with your kids. These are not "drug people," and there's nothing about their stories that promotes some ridiculous myth of the "badass rock & roll outlaw," waltzing into a police convention with a suitcase full of narcotics. Or anything of the kind. A bare minimum of 99.9% of these kids took some random pill at a party, and ended up DEAD. Not "twisted into some colorfully-altered caricature of a stupid rockstar immersed in an amusing, recreational, mind-expanding nightmare," but... DEAD.
The days of "recreational drug use," as the concept has been presented to us over the last however many decades, are over.
"From the perspective of an adult (and recreational drug user),
Reagan’s message looks much worse: alarmist and damaging, a
child-friendly arm of the continuing campaign to justify
and perpetuate a 'war on drugs' with racially and
economically disproportional targets."
The Guardian, 2016
And on, and on, and on, and on. Might as well try to log onto the internet with an Etch-a-Sketch, as entertain these obsolete themes any further. "Alarmist and damaging," whines The Guardian in 2016, as it plays the alarmist race card, like someone trying to log onto the internet with an Etch-a-Sketch. And I've had some killer times on drugs as well, Bill Hicks, but who cares. You've been dead for 30 years. An 8-year-old article in The Guardian sounds like something from some quaint period in the past when people actually believed they could take random drugs and whine about racial injustice without coming off like rich, privileged douchebags. To anybody still holding onto this obsolete mindset, I say, "from the perspective of an adult,"
"Get real."
The game has changed. Nobody is fighting a "war on drugs" anymore. Most people don't care about weed. And thanks to the valiant efforts of the Sinaloan Border Patrol, enabled by America's intentionally weak "leadership," everything else has a 50% chance of killing you on the spot. If I had kids, I would sit down and give them the most heartfelt, loving Nancy Reagan speech I could think of.
I would say, "yeah, okay, I did some drugs, your mom did some drugs, and someday, you're going to be at a party and somebody is going to hand you a pill, like they did to me, Bill Hicks, Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Morrison, and GySgt. Joe Rembrandt. The difference is, none of us had Fentanyl or MS-13 to think about. You have been given a harder obstacle course than we had, so you have to be stronger than we were. I don't stand on a pedestal, speaking down to you from a high horse of hypocrisy about the dangers of drugs. I've done my share, and have had more than enough close calls with death, even without Fentanyl. But the caricature of the stoned, lawless rogue, while amusing in the 1960s, 70s, and perhaps even on through the 2010s, is an archetype that has become obsolete. You don't try to log into the internet with an Etch-a-Sketch, and you don't take random pills from ANYBODY in 2024. Stay away from all powders, and never drink anything from an open container. I would even stay away from weed at this point, since it can be laced, but if you absolutely must smoke it, get it from a dispensary. But stay away from weed as well, if you can. It's not the good old days, and we aren't in Kansas anymore. When you are presented with the gun, and someone tells you to put it to your head and pull the trigger, get all Nancy Reagan on them and JUST SAY NO. Let 'em laugh. Their laughter won't kill you, and if they're mocking you for not joining them in at least a 50% chance of sudden death, are they really your friends? Just say no."
Love,
Dad
