[Xion Mythos]

Letter to the Editor to the St. Pete. Times, FL

FL May 11, 2004 -

As a clean and sober, reformed, convicted marijuana user/cultivator, I had to laugh out loud after reading the above mentioned article. It was nothing more than government sponsored propaganda.


When I was arrest for growing medical marijuana for a cancer patient in 1997, the Tampa police narcotics division told me that they had never seen marijuana that looked and smelled as potent as the stuff that I had been growing.


The people that smoked it called it a one toke miracle.


Myself, I was a chronic smoker—heavy use on a daily basis for years.


The federal judge that set my bail put me on weekly drug test. He told me that if he did not see a decline in the amount of the drug in my urine, he would revoke my bail; and I would set in jail until all court proceedings were finished. After years of heavy marijuana use, I instantly stopped using.


The withdrawal symptoms that I suffered were not as bad as the symptoms that I suffered when I decided to stop drinking coffee.


The only ill affect that I felt from the cessation of marijuana use was a little restlessness that lasted for two days. Whereas with coffee withdrawals, I had pounding headaches for days.


As for the amount of people who are in treatment centers for marijuana use, those numbers should not be construed as correctly identifying a growing addiction problem.


Most first time offenders are given a choice—jail time or treatment time. Only an idiot would choose jail over treatment, and that is where these statistics are coming from.


Through my many years in the drug culture, I have known many chronic marijuana users. I have seen many of them abruptly stop using the stuff with no ill affects other than the restlessness that I spoke of earlier.

No one gets sick from ceasing marijuana use. Flulike withdrawal symptoms in heavy cannabis users are nothing more than figments of the governments propaganda machine. They do not exist.


Rick Meredith
DPFFL