Fun for 2008

I'm currently inclined to pick my races based on what looks like the most fun, and not try to use any seasonal strategy. I know this will mean I will often race poorly and maybe DNF more due to insufficient recovery time, but there's just too many fun races out there. I want to do them all. So I think I'll use 2008 to have fun and get used to 50+ mile running. When 2009 comes around, I can get back into strategic racing schedules.

I feel compelled to comment on my past drug use. (Hey, you never know - I might run for president. I smoked but I didn't inhale, right?)

My drug days were not long. I went from a totally anti-drug kid spouting the "party line" to a smoker and toker in a matter of a few months.
That's why I worry about my son. His mother claims he's not like other kids and that he'd never do stuff like that. To me that's one totally naive mom. I won't accuse my son of doing things I only suspect he might someday do. He really is a good kid. But so was I. I OD'd and almost killed myself. So if my son's mom is comfortable with her head planted firmly underground, then my job is that much more important. My son is now 14. I was 16 whe I started smoking and 17 when I started doing drugs.

99% of my drug use was during a paltry 12-month span of time. My pill use was about three months long, if I remember right. I started by taking Tylenol #3. My body got used to that stuff quickly, which required that I took even more to get high. The last time I got high on Tylenol #3, I took 13 pills. That's enough to kill a horse, but I didn't OD on that stuff.
I was afraid I would OD so instead of escalating further with Tylenol #3, I decided to buy a couple of downers from one of my doper friends. She told me to cut one in half the first time, but the pills were the hard kind - not easy to cut. Besides, I reasoned, after doing up to 13 Tylenol #3 to get high, I'd just take a whole one. Nothing happened. It usually takes 15-20 minutes to get rushed. So I took another whole one.
I'm sure most people don't OD on one of these pills. Very likely the huge amounts of Tylenol #3 I'd been taking were still in my body and these downers reacted by keeping me from feeling high, but also overdosing me chemically.

I could go into more detail but I'll stop there.

A week later, without doing drugs for the whole week, I took one more. That triggered an episode identical to the first - maybe a tiny bit worse. I never took another pill to get high again.

Years later, meeting an old friend, he lit up a joint and I toked on it a bit. I didn't enjoy it and it made me feel terrible. I felt terrible for three days afterwards.

I haven't smoked cigarettes, dope, or taken pills to get high in over 25 years. My experience is obviously confined to my own life, so I'm not going to say what I'm about to say is an absolute for everyone - I could be wrong. But to me, it appears that doing drugs is just a cowards way of committing suicide. Real life activities and interacting with people is so incredibly awesome that drugs can't compete. So it appears to me that drugs are just a depressed, insecure, pathetic way for weak people to "accidentally" kill themselves. I include alcoholism in that pot too.
I suppose you could try to argue that if you can drink socially then you can smoke dope socially. But I counter that smoking - whether cigarettes or dope - is horrible for your health. Having a drink isn't. With smoke, there's no threshold you have to surpass - it's poisonous in any amount, whether it kills you or not. With drinking, you have to surpass a certain limit before toxicity becomes an issue.

Anyways, I admit I may be wrong, but that's how I see it.