Gateway Drugs: Marijuana VS Alcohol and Tobacco

I do so love it when my students are conscious and intellectual beings who seek to question the ways of the world. What follows below is a Facebook thread between Atiqah and myself.

Me: The people who don't like you just haven't taken the time to get to know you, you are harmless and charming (I'm looking at you, government officials!)- the reason why Medical and legal authorities are against Marijuana is not so because of the effects of the substance itself but more in the fact that it is statistically proven to be a gateway drug...

Atiqah: but if marijuana has an illegal status in many countries because it's a gateway drug, why don't they make tobacco and alcohol illegal too? if it's because of MONEY, then won't marijuana make them richer too? and plus, marijuana doesn't have strong negative effects to the physical being of the user, unlike alcohol and tobacco.

Me: true, ah you have opened another can of worms. Worth exploring none the least. alcohol and tobacco appeared on the scene long before people knew about the addictive effects of narcotics. By the time they knew, various big companies had already established strong lucrative industries around it. They did try to outlaw these substances in various ... See Morecountries in various times. But it always turned out a failure given the influence of the large corporations and ingenuity of the consumers.

On the point of money, you are right. But given the current attitude towards any kind of substance use or abuse, companies can't risk the baggage of adding on one more substance to their shelves. With alcohol, their jobs of maintaining a consumer health friendly product is not so bad. But with tobacco, they have been constantly fighting a scientific battle against cancer-related and heart disease studies. And they have had to constantly refine their product to make it "healthier".

Then the official reason that Marijuana is a gateway drug doesn't really apply like you said since alcohol and tobacco are also statistically proven to be gateway drugs. Perhaps the real unspoken issue is that Marijuana production has been monopolized by drug syndicates who refuse to play with and by big corporate rules.

From a medical safety point of view, that means that the Marijuana products could be tampered with cheaper substances in order to earn their producers more money.

From a more real politico-economical stance, the issue is more about being unwilling to work with and in effect make legal these drug syndicates who are third world black market power players. If Marijuana was made legal on a large scale, this would in turn render unto these third world drug syndicates the opportunity to earn legal corporate status. Trapping them in that illegal status also gives the corporation the ability to condemn Marijuana as a product and draw attention away from the more real health hazards that they sell.

Lastly, the socio-economical reason why Marijuana is frowned upon is the transient and weightless lifetsyle and ideology that it is associated with. (As you mentioned, the Rastafarian influence). This is highly incongruent with the dominant established protestant work ethic that is the life force of modern economies (and I must say, you can see this in so many Singaporeans who pride work for work's sake and count their success as human beings in material and status terms). And as you should know, the abnormal easily and often becomes the deviant.

Note: Alcohol has much the same effects as Marijuana but users over time have become more loose with the temporary mentally-debilitating effects of alcohol by terming it as a "social lubricant".

5. Fight philosophy: On the "Berserk" state and "Rage"

In this post, I will focus on the mentality or ability to switch from a calm and normal societal functioning mode to one that is prepared to take damage and dish out accordingly and even death at extremes which is so essential in both fighting for our lives or in the ring of a sanctioned fight.

Personally, I prefer the cool, calm and calculating detached approach to self and other when fighting. But the mainstream and spectator-projected blood lust upon combat sports and fights means that many a times, rage prevails in the popular pysche of both fighter and fight audience.

Before we delve into rage, I must separate it from the often confused "berserk" state. The berserk stage is a state of mind, body and social disconnection. The fear that a berserk fighter instils in the other feeds off his own self-conception of invulnerability and sometimes limitless god-like ability. In war situations, many documented cases of combatants going berserk later state a foggy memory of the incident. Why would such reckless behavior occur? On a biological level, it has apparent survival value. In the adrenaline-pumped and furious moment, the specimen overcomes all odds and betters his chances of survival since he has nothing to lose and everything to gain from the berserk state. Thus the berserk state ultimately derives from the fear of losing one's most precious gift and escalates into action in the form of an all-out attempt to overcome the odds.

Rage however has different roots. My personal experience of rage is "getting even". I recall being hit straight on in the face and then something changed in me. I hit hard and squarely out from a bad position. That rocked him. I rushed forward with my guard high and thinking to myself, "Oh, you are gonna pay for that." And accordingly, he pulled back. But I calmed myself down and smiled it off as I remembered that it was a friendly bout. Here in lies the first difference in rage and the Berserk state, I was able to remember my social time and space. This is what I believe rage boils down to. A sense of injustice, of something that needs to be righted. It greatly bolsters one's fighting spirit, to throw out that one hard strike from a defensive position which would rock the assailant who was peppering on raining blows and turn the initiative. It also achieves the same purpose as the Berserk state in instilling fear in one's opponent.

This then leaves me thinking: How do we de-escalate from a moment of rage to prevent the trappings of a mental state predominantly focused on offense (since the objective is to make the other pay) and thus leave one open to clever defensive strategies?

AND

Does a state of focused rage exist? Is it beneficial to maintain a focused rage in a bout?

4. Fight Philosophy- On Tactical Krav Maga, drawing from "Meditations on Violence"

Violence is real and is unlike sparring. The intent is not to score points, secure dominance but to kill/harm/damage.

This post is an affirmation and refinement of TKM and the methods of instruction that I must impart to my future students.

Violence is real. It is raw. My humble experiences with it do not triumph the author's. But I recognize the numbing chemical cocktail, the rush and the mental playback on loop after the event as he mentions.

I strive to add in more mental preparation into TKM defenses. Verbal disarming and acting submissive are good enough. But to make things better, a deep cleansing breath, check your footing and a "Go" mental switch to attack must be flipped on. When jumped out of nowhere, the student must be trained to shut out all pain and information and just act: attack!

TKM's ladder of survival options fit with Sgt Miller's. It is better to run, de-escalate, fight than do nothing in that order respectively.

Avoidance is the biggest cure. If you do not go to troublesome places and look for trouble, trouble will most likely not look for you. But when it does, "Big Dog tactics" and circumventing conflicts with deliberate and purposeful submissive acts should also be taught to students as skills to deactivate the situation.

When we make the "Go" mental switch to fight, hit hard, fast and against vital areas (distinction must be made against pain and rehabilitating areas). TKM does this well as chained combatives and defense drills are effective and fast and yet simple, thus surviving the jarring effects of the adrenal chemical cocktail that floods our bodies in cases of confrontation and violence.

Things that need to be made better
"Big Dog tactics" and circumventing conflicts with deliberate and purposeful submissive acts -> role-playing

More focus must be done on getting hit and carrying on despite getting hit.

More unpredictable situations must be added in to drill students who have mastered basic principles in order to test and stretch them.