Reminder that Evil targets kids - Joe vs Elan School
(elan.school)
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I've got to chapter 70, but there's something I can't help but point out:
Our protagonist fucking drove his AA coach to quit by focusing on how ridiculous here Ronald Reagan "just say no to drugs" approach was, and how she was ridiculous for describing weed as a "gateway drug"
Except he admits that he was using weed to cover over the emotional damage of the Elan school. He says that being sober made him worse, even though his real problem was the emotional damage bubbling to the surface that he wasn't actually dealing with. He ended up at Elan because of stupid shit with weed, and his emotional abuse with Elan and Weed as a medicine led him to fucking acid. After arguing with his AA counselor, he became a drug dealer, got so fucking high off other drugs that he hallucinated that the police had murdered him, while his friends were robbed of all their possessions.
Look.
It's corny, but here's the thing.
She's obviously fucking right, and so was Nancy Reagan.
No, really, actually say no to drugs when you clearly can't fucking handle them responsibly.
I think it's one of those things where it's metaphorically right, but not literally.
Smoking weed doesn't compel you to do acid, cocaine, or anything else, but when you're told all of these things are SUPER BAD TERRIBLE, and then you do weed and it's... pleasantly relaxing and way less of a detriment on your daily functioning than alcohol is, you're inevitably going going to get curious and ask yourself 'if they lied to me about weed, what else are they lying to me about?' and consider trying something else that people say is actually good.
The other thing it does is put you in contact with a drug dealer. Weed is a literal gateway to the criminal underworld in that regard.
Of course, the elephant in the room about both of these things is that they hinge on the illegality of weed. When weed is legal, consuming it doesn't generate curiosity about illegal substances any more than alcohol or tobacco do. When weed is legal, you don't buy it a guy who gets regular phone calls from people who regularly murder eachother to control who distributes where.
So yeah, his AA coach, and Nancy Reagan were right that weed was gonna put him on path to worse things, but at the same time, he would never have become a drug dealer if he'd been able to buy weed from a legal business, rather than from a criminal.
I know a number of people who smoke marijuana, and they're all fine. I wouldn't think of them as addicts or junkies any more than I'd think of someone who likes a drink after work as an alcoholic.
...The only thing that rubs me the wrong way is that these people - these good people - are regularly in contact with a guy who, even if he is not a very bad guy himself, is one handshake away from some real fucking monsters.
...And weed doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be a gateway drug. But it kind of is, because they made it one.
I'm not so sure I believe that. I'm not confident that a weed distributor is going to never give any advice to someone on how to access mushrooms, acid, or ecstasy. The issue is how deeply are people going to dive into recreational drug use, and then continue on recreational drug use and begin getting involved in the criminal element for other recreational drugs.
It's not so much that it's just weed, it's that there is a drug culture out there, and most of it is criminal. And sure, if you remove the criminality to it... you then allow the massive fucking incentive of the other drugs themselves to fucking destroy people. You'll transfer people out of prisons and into hospitals and homelessness camps.
It becomes a total wash. This is because, in the end, drug abuse is a social problem, and social problems can't actually be solved by the government. They can only become solved by the society. A moral prohibition by the general population is what would fix it, and basically nothing else.
What do you think makes alcohol and tobacco magically different?
The dude was taking and traficking drugs before Elan.
It's not weed. It's not alchool either ( why isn't that drug constantly called the gateway? ), it's giving-in to addictive personality traits because if feels good at the moment.
If you can't take drugs ( any drug, alchool too ) without spiraling into shoving drugs into every part of your life and drive it down a cliff ( litterally driving shit-faced in the story ), just say no to drugs indeed.
Same thing with fatties who can't buy dessert in bulk because they will stuff themself sick, unable to restrain themselves.
If you can't restrain yourself, don't keep your ''drug of choice'' in the house, learn to say politely but firmly no when offered. It gets easier the more you deny yourself that self-destructive behavior.
Of course you're going to lose friends with who your shared times revolved around doing the thing you stopped doing. ( They might not even have an addictive personaly out of control problem, but doing the thing is all you saw them for. ) Find other friends. Do something else.
You nailed it.
Yeah, that's basically a major thing here. Marijuana can't be used for self-medicating psychological disorders.
Fuck, look how bad alcohol is for that.
im sure its a good story but that formatting is unreadable cancer
It's fine on mobile
Yea, the formatting gets better as the comic progresses. Zooming out on my browser helped with this a bit.
If you've never heard of the Elan School, you should read this.
It's a living nightmare. It's almost unbelievable this place existed in the US.
I feel the opposite - the US is pretty much the only first would country where such a place could exist.
First half is ''adventures in violent, abusive, cult daycare for problem-teens that masquarades as a school''. Interesting.
Second half is ''LMAO DUDE, DRUGS!'' going around in circles.
The protagonist's problem with drug abuse ( addictive personality type, rationalizing his consumption and trafic ) started before the school.
Dude was doing and dealing drugs before the cult and abuse brainwashing.
It then became an easy ''akshually I take so much drug because of Elan'' answer for continuous drug abuse. Which would have happened without the violent daycare part.