LONG HAIR!? by Ollie Olwagen

I prefer to wear my hair long, and I mean l-o-n-g, but ever since I started doing that, I had the strangest reactions from different people.

My mother asked me, very politely, but extremely cautious, if I am using any drugs. The length of my hair made her immediately suspicious. But that was way, way back in the past and I know that she has a different opinion about long hair now.

One night I went to play pool with my friends and guess what? In spite of the fact that I was the most slender-built person in the group, which included two macho mean machines, the owner came to me and told me that he did not want any trouble from me. The rest of the group wore their hair short.

JOURNEY OF A BUG

 I watched a bug crawl across the  window-sill and that got me thinking. Why is he alive? What are his problems?  He also has problems.
 
I've tried to commit suicide but that didn't work, so I reverted to drugs. Well, not really. I was on drugs before I tried. But getting in worse  was the result.
 
The bug can't take drugs and if you think about it, can't commit suicide either. So what is his purpose in life? To live his life to the best of his ability. So I can do the same. I am no better off than he is because  I have just the same problems, so therefore I must also solve my problems  without reverting to drugs, alcohol or suicide.
 
Someone said that eventually I took drugs to get away from my feelings,  problems and everything else concerned. True. Now I have to learn to make do without drugs or suicide or alcohol for that matter.
 
To think positive is easy for me when I'm not upset or depressed. Now, in the opposite situation I have to try to cope, but that takes time and help. I need it badly. I also crave which is something else which I have to learn to cope with, because there will always be times in my life when  I will be tempted or I will crave. That is another area which I need help  with.
 
I am very impatient, but when I looked at the bug I realised he knows  where he's going and he knows how he is going to go about it. Same should apply for me.
 
My spiritual life is a mess. I feel guilty. But there are so many questions  that to me remain unanswered. I would like to get to know some more. I  have actually been very ignorant since I've been taking drugs and now  all of a sudden (no offence) it seems that everyone else knows best and  I know nothing.
 
I've been through this before and there are a few things that I disagree with, but then again it's your way of doing things. My memory at the moment is terrible. It frustrates me. I wonder if my memory isn't perhaps permanently  ruined from the drugs. I don't know.
 
I worry about whether I'll get accepted on the outside for what I am - not for what people want me to be. Because I don't want to change what  I am to suit other people. I am who I am and that is what I will always be. Nobody else. And most of all I want my mother to be proud of me. Someone  - not a rubbish or a bum or a drug-addict.

A DRUGGIE'S PRAYER
 Don't love this life, don't never know why.
 
There were colours flying
and children crying
all around the chosen ones,
all in a dream
 
I'm lonely, I always thought God would care, now I'm lost and in despair.
 
He so loved the world that He gave his only Son. Who the Romans crucified on the cross at Calvary. On the third day Jesus rose from the dead to forgive the world their sins. So we are forgiven, if only we accept the  crucifixion.
 
God I need to break down and cry, I need to know someone loves me as I am. I am tired of looking, God. All those years that I've ignored the ways of man, I did it in faith that You would show me the way. I've told  people that I want to go away and I'm not even sure about what I say any more. I'm scared. I'm not so sure what I was supposed to be doing all these years. I realise that people are only people in the image of You.  No matter where we are we must do all we can to the glory of You.
 
I'm not a animal, I don't want to break laws. I don't want to hurt people  because You say, "Do unto others as you want done unto you".
 
I'm told I'm running away from myself, to accept who I am, but I don't know what else to do.
 
I don't know how to face myself, because I am myself. God if it's to find  You and be a child of You, here I am.

 IT'S A HEALTH THING, NOT A HELL THING
 Throughout history, human societies have recognised certain substances of natural origin which either offer  temporarily heightened perceptions or suggest an escape route from the unpleasant features of life, whether real or imaginary.  Fermented liquor  from fruit or vegetables, or plant products such as opium, cocoa leaves, cannabis, khat and tobacco have been accepted in varying degrees as social lubricants or as private escape mechanisms.
 
The drinking of wine and other fermented liquors were chronicled in the  earliest literature known to us. But in comparatively recent times, voices  have been raised against many such substances. For instance King James  1 of England, around the year 1600, inveighed against tobacco. It was,  he wrote, "a great contempt of God's good gifts that the sweetness of man's breath... shall be wilfully corrupted by this stinking smoke".  For good measure, he added that the habit was "a branch of the sin  of drunkenness, which is the root of all sins".
 
But for every such grumbler, there were scores of poets, philosophers  and physicians willing to speak out in praise of drinking, smoking or chewing one or another drug. What has come more slowly to the attention of the world is the realisation that these substances produce addiction,  and lend themselves to abuse.
 
In the case of cigarettes, their mass production coincided with the First  World War, when they were handed out virtually fee as meagre compensation to soldiers enduring desperate conditions in the trenches.  It has taken  many decades for medical science to confirm the causal relationship between smoking and such illnesses as lung cancer, ischaemic heart disease and  bronchitis.
 
Undoubtedly it could be said of alcohol, as it is already said of tobacco, that if these substances were invented and put on the market today, both would promptly be condemned and outlawed by all countries' food and drug authorities. This has already been the fate of heroin and its deravitives, the hallucinogenic drugs and the many pharmaceutical products which were created to ease pain or treat disease but unfortunately turned out to  lead to dependence and abuse.
 
The positive response to all these substances is to find and promote worthwhile  social alternatives to addictive behaviour. While more pressure can be  brought to bear on governments to tighten the borders around drug-producing countries or to increase prices of alcohol and tobacco, people must be  left with an open choice.
 
If individuals esteem their own health and that of others sufficiently highly, they are less likely to indulge in harmful practices. In the words of the World Health Organisation's slogan: Healthy living - everyone a winner.

WORLD HEALTH, The Magazine of  the World Health Organisation