I guess it's out there more than ever because of Philip Seymour Hoffman's recent tragic death. Or because of the article in the NY Times last month entitled "Prescription Painkillers Seen as Gateway to Heroin." Could also be due to my conversation with a doctor friend who specializes in addiction, who has seen time and again the quick slippery slope people fall down into heroin addiction once their doctor prescribes them painkillers.
James' thoughts are how to produce a natural high similar to that created by heroin. He has a lot of good points: stress-out for short periods of time, working out, socializing, eating at least a modified paleo diet, hot spicy foods, fewer grains, sex, laughter. Sounds about right.
Painkiller addiction scares me. Opiates scare me. I tried to avoid the Percosets after Levi, but I figured they couldn't hurt if I took them for just a couple of days. That was 2 days too many and the after-effects lasted more than a week. No thank you. Let's not get into too many details, shall we?
Nancy Reagan was effective with her brain-on-drugs campaign, by keeping kids like me far away from street drugs in high school. But 1980s Reaganomics also made the drug companies stronger. Today we hear stories of problems with on-the-spectrum kids taking Ritalin and Adderall these days (remember last year's national story about a kid who committed suicide in conjunction with his Adderall addiction?) and adults taking OxyContins. People don't take these drugs seriously enough, and yet off-label drug use is rampant. Are pharm parties real or made up? I like to think high schoolers are smarter than that, but it is pretty easy to access stuff which is powerfully addictive due to our nation's licensed doctors who write prescriptions. And then they freak out over issues of marijuana legalization. I don't get it. It's all about money in the end. We live in a Capitalist society, I guess is what people argue.
Back to happiness and Xanadu. I loved dance and rollerskating, so as a child of the 80s, I naturally loved this movie that flopped at the box office. Of course I was already in love with Olivia Newton John because of Grease. My cousin bought me the record for this movie because she knew how much I loved it. Back then I didn't appreciate the architecture used in the film, but the Pan Pacific Auditorium was a Los Angeles architectural icon that was destroyed in a fire in the 1980s.
Like James, I listen to the theme song from Xanadu (and watch the awesome choreography) and feel totally pumped. I hope you do too!
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| Xanadu was filmed here. source: Wikipedia |
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