Powerful words from OPN member Mike Boop

I smoke pot. Not for the high, not to be cool, but because I have a disease that has turned me into a shell of my former self, a prisoner of a failing body. The pain is unbearable at times, but I carry on, because I smoke pot.

The pharmaceutical medications that I take daily would knock out a roomful of people, but I have taken them for so long, I barely feel them. They only remain effective for me because I smoke pot.

I am stared at and ridiculed by children, I am alone in my misery, I suffer in solitude, because I smoke pot.

I live in constant fear; fear of falling and being unable to rise, fear of persecution by those that don't understand, fear of more surgery that always takes longer to recover from than the last, fear of being busted for only trying to hang on one more day, because I smoke pot.

The police, the courts, society, and our entire legislation label me a criminal, because I smoke pot.

I didn't ask for this, I didn't want this, I did nothing to deserve this. I sit and cry as I write this, tears blurring the keys, because I smoke pot.

The world seems a very cold and vicious place to me, I will soon lose my transportation, my home, what little money and things I have, because I smoke pot.

I live a life that some envy; never working, social security pays my bills, food stamps buy my food, government housing covers my head and gives me a place that I can call home. A prisoner in a prison inside a prison, because I smoke pot.

My house gets broken into, but the police threaten to destroy what few possessions remain, in search of a bust that doesn't include the criminal that wronged me, because I smoke pot.

I hire a defense lawyer with money I don't have, to defend my right to be one of the living dead, because I smoke pot.

I bother no others, but no one said that life was fair, it seems even less so, because I smoke pot.

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