Tanya J: Sexing, Scoring and Away from Home

My typical day...is a 30 -48 hour day and then a big 15 hour sleep.  Sometimes it starts at 7-8pm sometimes it starts at 3am...it really depends on so many things- where I am, who I'm with, how im working at that time (ie from the street or online), if I wanna go score, or if I have any specific plans. So even if i do very different activities or stick to wildly different times from day to day- I'm usually trying to take care of myself and people around me while working towards my own goals (making money, learning new things and trying to change some of the fucked up things in the world)  I use heroin basically every day..or at least I have done for the last 4 or So years... And I travel a fair bit - for work and to visit friends and family ...even when I don't plan on it I still end up moving around a lot.  A lot of the time its almost like there's this feeling that I'm being moved on or I'm about to be moved on. On the street in Narrm [Melbourne] police will issue sex workers and our clients "move on notices " if they think we are loitering with intent to solicit...and even if I dodge them, I see a regular client get told to move on & if he's seen in the area again its a 24 hour ban. And even if I rent an apartment there is this feeling of "how long will we last here" - places where sex workers and drug users have hung out for years keep getting gentrified so fast- and now im in Europe I similar things happening everywhere I go- in Amsterdam, in Oslo, in London...

Most days I spend a few hours texting/talking to potential clients and filtering through time wasters, and other people I get a bad vibe from.. And maybe on average I do one job a day.. Sometimes I might do three quickies (10-15 minute car jobs) in an afternoon,  other times I might do 3 bookings all week (and hopefully they are 1 hour or longer or otherwise I end up with no drugs and real sick hanging out)

But when work is really quiet it goes from good to double bad coz I'm not only broke but also going thru withdrawals for heroin and often also coming down off uppers ...but I'd rather have good times and some shit than just the same boring  same thing again and again. I enjoy being outside my comfort zone or challenging myself in different ways.

How do you travel over borders so much with a habit?

I have info and things on my devices but I just be vague and send heapsa texts but in trying to avoid extra risks .  I don't carry shit on me, they drug test everything I have twice for residue, question me for 3 hours as it is. It's like its better to be sick for 24 hrs than risk like everything when people are making fairly active watch. But anyway, finding shit, i dunno I think its easy in street based work ..either I find people somehow or I know enough people or place to go to then ask then to ask people  for things .. Like these days I just travel back and forth from Stockholm to Australia. I can get OST sometimes like methadone but I try avoid that now its easier being sick 24 hours than getting off and on methadone

I like to read a lot about history, take notes and share stuff with friends or my partner. If I don't make music or write poetry or spend time reading/listening to oral histories ...then I kinda sink down into a depressive hole... I need to do things like this to keep some hope in future or to distract myself from tendencies to be overly pessimistic & cynical

A big part of me taking drugs ( injecting heroin and smoking ice) is to find time and create the kind of mental state I want to be in to focus or relax or enjoy doing those kinds of things to the max... And also to treat myself and enjoy the money I earn from sex work- as a kind of investment in myself and how I feel.

Clear a$ FIJI: Make. That. Money$$

I'm laptopping in Fiji, buzzed on my second glass of white wine awaiting my taxi driver.  It's not as cheap as the Phillipines here so I have to be careful, but the weather is certainly perfect and much much cooler than summer in Japan.  It's actually winter here, its still warm and lovely.  Just not humid like Toikyo.  I made a spur of the moment purchase for a RT ticket to Sydney that cost $600.  The flight even had a 12 hour long stopover in Fiji!  I had never been here so I definitely was thinking really hard of some good reasons why I SHOULDN'T GO.  The purpose of the trip was work.  I am saving for a used laptop.  Last year, in LA my shit was all stolen out of the car.  I left it in an unlocked car while I dropped my friend off at the theatre he worked on and I popped in and out of the car parked in front of the theater all night.  It was still lifted.  But nice and quietly, no broken glass.  Just a clean lift.  You're welcome.  He left a sweaty t shirt in the backseat in lieu and it didn't actually dawn on me until hours later that the backpack that held my laptop was gone.  Definitely a stupid move on my part, so I stayed quiet for many months.  I was just going to have to do without my new machine.  Somehow.  Ten months later, I'm still trying to make the best out of the situation and trying to figureo out how I can get a digital production machine into my life again.  I'd just been approved of some new credit lines but if I wasn't making the $50-100 extra per month to pay off the cc card bills then charging something that I couldn't afford did not make logical sense.  Been there, done that.  Charge the future with no plan on how to pay your bills for it.  A lesson I think everyone who has a credit card quickly learns.

I am on a FB forum for sex workers that travel internationally.  I get notices when someone posts on my FB feed.  This woman had toured in Sydney and she wrote "I killed it.  I worked from 10am-10pm and I had to turn away all the drug users (mostly coke), and still did heaps great. Its your choice if you want to do it, but I choose not to." AND THAT SOLD ME.   DRUGS AND MONEY.  BOOM.  WHERE'S MY CREDIT CARD.  BITCH I'M SIGNING.  SYDNEY HERE I COME AGAIN.

It was Hulk like primal expression of being fed up with making minimum living wage working my ass off as a teacher in Tokyo, with no ability to even fathom buying a new computer, even with a credit card.  I've just been fed up with not having enough money.  Sex Work is about making changes and upward mobility happen.  Therefore this campaign is called OPERATION UPWARD MOBILITY DOWN UNDER.  I need a new used laptop.  I'm aiming for a mere $500 budget for a machine that do Final Cut and Photoshop.  I've been without these things for almost one year and almost convincing myself that I don't actually need a computer.  But, I do, I really really do.

I'm sick of the straight life I lead.  I'm sicking of not being able to be in control of my situation.  I'm sick of being in a place where men do not think I am attractive.  This is also a motivator.  Plus, I want to make money and do drugs.  And fuck.  I'm not even exaggerating.  I'm ready to let loose.  I've just passed something like a breaking point.  It was this need to really not let other agencies or stripclubs determine if I was going to be able to make this money, it was this strong desire to just fuck all those middle men and try to make this happen myself.  I have lost a lot of confidence in Japan since the Japanese male and I are not really on the same energetic wave length it seems.  I need to go to a place where I attract bees to honey again.  Be myself, the queen, the godddess again.  Get my grove back.  GET a laptop again finally. Take my art and music production out of hiatus.  I can do this.

Stormy is the New Black

Stormy Daniels got arrested at an Ohio strip club last night.  I don’t think she even had to wear orange because she was out on bail the same night and the charges were dropped the next day.  Her mug shot looked great. Straight from the stage to jail. Do not pass go. Do not crawl along the stage to collect your tips first.  Of course it was a set up. But Stormy’s got one of the hottest lawyers in media right now, Michael Avenatti who is quickly able to overturn the bullshit scheme.  The bad guys have to go back to the drawing board. She is lucky this time. It’s going to be hard to be more careful next time because even in liberal California clubs, touching of the buttocks in a sexual manner is considered prostitution, it is a grey area inside the clubs. In 70% of any city's clubs a dancers can be caught with a dick in the hand to really get the correct charge, which is the annual sting that happens in most of modern day “strip clubs” in America.  Just like it happens on the streets, on backpage and craigslist of the days. Stings. Sweep the bitches up. But this sting was different. Timely. When I was a stripper in 2000, I made a living not doing extras but that was me. It sounds like Stormy was caught on a technicality of touch without a penis involved, otherwise it would have been mentioned. And it sounds like it didn’t even happen in a private booth or VIP area which is where prostitution usually takes place. Also, in the media, none of them mentioned the charge name, which i wonder if it was prostitution? Lewd behavior? Unwanted touch?  I read the police report and it is written as if the touch is non consensual.

Defendant is charged with three counts of sexually oriented activity in a sexually oriented business.

She jumped down from the stage and put a customers face in her cleavage and smacked her boobs

against their faced and that is being framed as the crime.   Any police officer I have EVER chatted

with, including the ones that arrested me EVER thought that arresting prostitutes was a solution or a good use of their time.  I would LOVE to interview these cops and see if they can actually say their grounds for arrest to a camera with a straight face. NO. #NOT.YOU.TOO Nice touch getting one of

the lady cops to do the sting.  She’s probably like, oh dang I don’t get to dress like a hooker and

cruise the streets in my secret super whore costume and loving it tonite? I get to use department

money and get smacked in the face with some titties?  Stormy Daniels’ titties? Some police have it

rough. I do remember the firemen who came in the club periodically to do their fire inspection

NEVER flirted or acted inappropriately though. They’d roll through the club look at the exits in the

back and not smile or talk to anyone.  So it’s possible that the cops involved in the sting had some

inner narrative about making America safer by doing their jobs, playing inside their brain while Cardi

B was violently twerking so hard in their faces they couldn’t breathe. Smart strippers know the laws,

especially if they are full service sex workers.  The ones doing the hand and blow jobs and more in

the clubs are the ones we are trying ot get! Or some other narrative to divide good girls and bad girls

again. Touching someone’s buttocks with the intention of stimulation and vice versa, rubbing your

butt on the genitals til they come IS touching genitals with intention of orgasm or something like that and that is prostitution in most of the laws, but in most laws it is rarely enforced.  Once a year or so,

and often, like this totally politically motivated. Stormy could be risking her life, I unfortunately

imagine her dead, face down in a pool somewhere, faked suicide or overdose. I doubt she does

drugs, because i am sure it would have been exposed to the media vultures. Stormy and all of these bogus charges are my 12 Thai boys in the cave story. I want sexuality to come into the light out of

the cave. Even in America, we still have so long to go before men and women are equal in a lot of

key ways.  

Pills for ART, ART for Pills

Nan Goldin came up in the 1970s doing Heroin Chic photographs

before Calvin Klein branding created that term

in the 90s.  She is most known for her gritty

New York apartment documentary color

photographs of sex, queers, whores,

drugs and their lives of that time.  

its protagonists—including the

artist herself—are captured in intimate

moments of love and loss.

They experience ecstasy and pain

through sex and drug use; they revel at dance clubs and bond with

their children at home; and they suffer from domestic violence

and the ravages of AIDS. “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is

the diary I let people read,” Goldin wrote.

The collection that evokes her main body of work known as “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” has been included in every major art museum in the world from the Museum of Modern Art to the Guggenheim in the U.S, a household name for photographers, especially those artists who came up when AIDS was bringing every down to their knees.  The Act Up Die In was coined at this time as direct action awareness to bring attention to this urgent issue. Goldin is bringing awareness through a Die In once again, to bring attention to America’s current opioid crisis. Goldin was addicted to heroin in the 70s and 80s and then almost 30 years later after she required prescription pain killers to relieve herself from the recovery of a pinched nerve surgery, she became addicted again.  This time the drug was oxycotin. She believes one of the wealthiest art beneficiary families The Sacklers are to blame. The Sackler family made most of their wealth by drugs and have “given back” via art philanthropy which they are more well known for world wide than the creation of Valium in the 60s and Oxycotin in the 90s.

“She says that Arthur Sackler, who ran an advertising agency that successfully marketed the drug Valium in the ’60s, essentially created the model that was later used by his brothers, Raymond and Mortimer, founders of Purdue Pharma in 1991, to sell OxyContin for profit, ultimately at the expense of lives. As a result, she believes that all Sacklers have an obligation to help end the opioid crisis.”  She wants art museums to stop taking donations from this family and she wants the Sackler foundation to create harm reduction projects and start to put money towards the current opioid crisis which she says, they helped to create. Nan Goldin found herself in the 3rd year of her addiction, eventually overdosing on Fentanyl which she thought was heroin because she had already two timed her prescription and ended up being cut off by her doctors, so she had to turn to the streets to get her fix.  The result was almost deadly, but unlike some lives like Prince that Fentanyl has claimed Goldin survived to tell and shout and use her global art star leverage to demand that the very museums that indeed did and do support her career as an artist even if they were partially responsible for her addiction clean the blood off their hands and not continue to act like they are unaware of the crisis that is killing more people everyday than ever before. She wants the public to become aware to and the work that she is doing is unlike any activism that any other artist is doing to challenge philanthropy and the opioid crisis at the same time.  Follow the money. Act Up.

Special K Saved Me

Ketamine  has been the subject of some media featuring the work that the drug has done to miraculously and rapidly reverse depression and suicidal ideations for its patients.  The one time injection treatments that one clinic is charging $450 per. The treatment must, like other psychological treatments be done under the supervision, intake assessment and close monitor of a nurse and psych team.  It is not FDA approved as an antidepressant but it is approved as an anesthetic. There are several clinical trials running at the moment, that will hopefully lead to its full legal and appropriate use. Dr. Mandel of Ketamine Clinics of Los Angeles says “Ketamine is the best treatment for depression.”  One of the ways Ketamine works is by blocking the NMDA (N-methyl D-Aspartate Receptor) one of the 3 major glutamate receptors in the brain. This receptor is involved in synaptic plasticity and memory functions, among other functions. A Ketamine induced blockade of the NMDA receptor results in an increase in glutamate.  This initiates a cascade of neurobiological events that researchers believe is one of the key reasons behind ketamine’s rapid antidepressant effects. “Ketamine has a half life of 2 hours and 45 minutes but the effects are lasting for months” Lisa Monteggia, pHd “We got involved with really looking at how K triggers an antidepressant effect because of the real need,” she states, “recent clinical data shows that about ⅓ of depressed patients don’t respond to anti-depressants, so what do you do for those patients?” Traditional antidepressants can take up to 8 weeks to work and the effects of ketamine can be seen in 60-90 minutes.  It is addictive and does have a long term toxic effect. Therefore, taking it outside of a doctor’s supervision can have detrimental results. I’m sure many party people are going to here about this and try to dose themselves, but I think psychological counseling in conjunction with treatment is the treatment that you definitely can’t get at any circuit parties or afterhours clubs. I think the most effective facilitations happen when your facilitator isn’t also on drugs and isn’t also dealing with the same issues as you, i.e not in mutual codependence, even though this model has been the one that has helped many many drug users cope for short periods of time, but sometimes the outcomes/come downs/withdrawals as we probably personally have witnessed have led some down to some darker paths.

Jeff Ellis is bipolar has been hospitalized at psychiatric facilities but somehow  was able to consistently stay employed most recently at the Sky Network as a NFL football analyst.  His wife lost her job and his daughter went away to college and he had what he calls a complete mental collapse.   “No matter how amazing my loving wife was, I was still alone. Mental illness means you are alone.” Jeff now says, after Ketamine treatments that he no longer has to feel alone.  

We can find a dozen youtube testimonials and at least 2 VICE documentaries on how Ketamine has saved severely depressed people’s lives.  Some have definitely expressed fear that the treatment could be outlawed soon and send them reeling back to where they started, perhaps even further into the darkness.  It seems likely that this could happen given that Jeff Sessions was recently on a campaign to “crack down” on recently legalized marijuana state operations. Luckily, the Trump administration’s priorities have been reappropriated, but because of the Fentanyl opioid crisis which has not seen a large support of harm reduction tactics being funded, I have my doubts that Ketamine treatments can be assured safety for long under this presidency.  

I used to identify as having depression about ten years ago.  At this time, I had been smoking weed daily since my twenties but I do remember for an entire year of the most severe times, there would be days in which I was triggered into a spiraling depression and I would drive as fast as I could straight to a medical marijuana dispensary.  Tears would be streaming down my face, it was difficult to think straight yet I was tunnel visioned to the straight road that I knew was what I needed when these breaks happened. I would get there regardless of any cost to get my instant cure from this agony that I was currently feeling.  There were a few places in Los Angeles that I could smoke on site after purchase, so I would sit down and smoke my first bong hit and count backwards 5-4-3-2-1...Relief. This was when I truly identified as depressed medical marijuana as a medicine for my depression, because it was. Suicidal ideations were there, and risky behavior was there because I couldn’t muster the effort to kill myself.  I was actually just hoping a client would do it for me. These days, I don’t identify as depressed and I don’t smoke weed in the same way. The last time I had one of these depressive attacks was right before I moved to Japan. Japan doesn’t have easy access to any kind of cannabis, in fact it is very very illegal. The fear that I would not be able to find this kind of relief if needed triggered the same kind of fear that I hadn’t felt for many years.  At this time, I was in Seattle and marijuana was legal for all uses and did not require a prescription. I remember tearfully asking a worker there, if he would just come with me somewhere to smoke for a few minutes so that I didn’t have to be alone. I was terrified of something unknown, something that my head had created and only cannabis was going to be able to calm these voices down and I knew it based on my experience. At this time, I was willing to beg a stranger who I gambled  might at least understand the relief that marijuana could provide to depression and paranoia. For some people, they feel more paranoia, fear and depression on cannabis, but for me, it never ever had this effect. The man who worked there obliged, even though workers were not supposed to smoke with customers, he could see that I was desperate. If you get to look into the eyes of a creature who honestly believes that she is about to die, you will know it and do what you can to save or help her.  It has worked for me during this period to have a tow truck driver take my car down off the hooks from being towed away miraculously. I wasn’t faking it or being dramatic. I honestly felt like I was going to die and maybe they knew that? I understand very very well the feeling of relief that the Ketamine treatment patients are gleaming about and I feel happy for them. I have heard other severely depressed/bipolar people speak about wanting to kill themselves everyday, one of them was another sex worker who would always post these kinds of thoughts on her Facebook wall.  I wish and hope that they could find relief for their pain. I knew that there was nothing I could offer emotionally that would be strong enough and that felt terrible but I didn’t want to add to their frustration by being just another person telling them to control their thoughts, meditate, run, or smoke weed. It takes a lot of inner work which some people are just for whatever reason unable or incapacitated by this illness to consider. To break through, it takes a strong desire to want to, and the very definition of depression is that you do not want to do anything. Even actually planning how to kill yourself takes effort that one might not have so you are just trapped inside your ideations for years.   Ketamine apparently is the new trend in ways to help you step outside of your own mind and see your life differently.

The Cost of Wide Open Hearts

I started to get interested in highlighting different themes in the “current” opioid crisis, things that I haven’t talked about to date yet.  The opioid crisis isn’t new, it just became a bigger crisis it seems to me when majority white states and soccer moms started to crash their mini vans into trees on the freeway.  The crisis of addiction has always been a problem in people of color communities, and my harm reduction newsletter reminds me of these things. Perhaps the Fentanyl crisis in the midwestern states will cause some movement to happen that didn’t happen in South Central with crack in the 80s.   “The old assumption that there is a correlation between poverty and people of color and drug abuse leaves many of the white rural families of potential addicts woefully ignorant of the signs of abuse and treatment.” At least the situation is seen as a Federal emergency which is supposed to inject more help than harm, however, some skeptical parties feel that the damage that punitive drug war tactics and mass incarceration will cause will continue to affect QTPOC disproportionately.  

Harm Reduction centers seem to espouse a social justice framework that is simply based on not letting people die or be punished for where they are currently at.  While most of the workers have been drug users themselves, even if not actual drug users, working in the trenches of harm reduction often creates its own victim/rescuer identity that creates its own psychological addiction around the endless supply of cases and placing the volunteer or outreach worker in an epidemic that will never be solved for many community members.  It becomes a new identity after one gets clean or an alternative high and crash cycle for others. This doesn’t take away from the fact that great work that often very few people want to do is still done. Joelle Puccio, who works with a lot of prenantal addicts says that automatically assuming that certain behaviors of prenantal addcts are an endemic cause and effect relationship are due to the fact that we cannot ethically study this sample of the population fairly.  “What I am saying is that there is simply no evidence to support the harms that our society blames on perinatal substance use. In scientific research, perinatal substance use is associated with negative outcomes. It is important to note that associations are not a cause and effect relationship. Good research is difficult to perform and interpret, entirely due to the legal and ethical status of substances. It is impossible to design a randomized controlled trial where you take group of pregnant people and tell half of them to smoke meth because you want to find out if it hurts their baby. Because of the threat of criminal and child services consequences, the only families that we are able to study are those that have been caught.”  

There is also more than just overdose that is costing money.  There are Hepatitis C infections
“ there is a cure for hepatitis C; the bad news is that the cheapest course of treatment costs more
than $20,000 and ranges all the way up to $90,000. “ and because users are shooting with dirty water
from toilets and rivers, they are getting infections called bacterial endocarditis which are treated at the
rate of 40-50,000 new cases each year.  It causes heart valve infections and strokes in patients that
are as young as 20-30 years old. They often have to have open heart surgery to replace an infected
heart valve. The treatment can cost up to $120,000 per patient to treat.
Sometimes patients require multiple complicated surgeries, including open-heart
surgery, with no guarantee that one will be enough if the patient can’t stay clean.  
Medical programs in some states will pay for the treatment for curable Hep C only
if the patient is clean, making their drug treatment a priority and added expense.

https://www.vox.com/2018/3/6/16453530/america-opioid
-crisis-epidemic-bacterial-endocarditis-hepatitis-c

http://harmreduction.org/blog/amplifying-hope/

Riders of the Stormy

While the passing of FOSTA/SESTA and the closing of Backpage have forced many sex workers to feel like their world is getting worse than ever, Stormy Daniels is headlining the news with her lawyer and speaking more coherently about than other women who had previously positioned their vaginas in ways that could threaten the presidency: Marilyn Monroe and Monica Lewinsky come to mind.  I’m positive that a thorough cleansing of Ms. Clifford’s drug use and record of being a good parent has already been scrutinized by the media and current administrations’ legal teams trying to save their asses, therefore if she had anything else that would shake her credibility in the claims including her recent lawsuit for defamation, I believe it would have come out. The fact that she does legal sex work helps immensely as well.  Her stripclub tour “Make America Horny Again” definitely serves her to profit from this affair which porn headliners typically make about $130,000 for touring the stripclub circuit of the U.S as a feature performer annually. But so what, she deserves to make money and she is smart for doing so. She crowd fundraised $250,000 for legal fees in record time. Stephanie Clifford, said she set up the campaign so that could "speak honestly and openly" against the "intimidation tactics" used by Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the president himself, she wrote in the campaign description.  She claims to not be a victim--of sexual assault, but after scouring through all of the media to catch up on this scandal, it seemed to have armed herself with a strong lawyer who is ready to be her wingman on TV and in court. She showed up at the trial of Michael Cohen with the intention to stare him down, reminding me of Hester Prynne in The Scarlett Letter, proudly wearing ALL the letters that everyone has tried to label her with: Adulteress, Adult Actress, Slut, Whore, Liar, Gold Digger.  There seemed to be more criticism and hatred of Obama than of Stormy Daniels in all my research. Although she doesn’t claim to be a victim of sexual assault, she does claim to be a victim of bullying and intimidation which directly affected her career and threatened her and her child. In other MeToo news this week, Andrea Constand has triumphed in her accusations of being drugged and raped by Bill Cosby who IS a clear victor in the momentum of MeToo. It is a clear moment in time in which women's voices are being heard and the women who are bringing forth accusations are not backing down.  Stormy and her current Michael Avenatti stand to take the re-election of Trump and perhaps leading to impeachment while he is in his current term for campaign violations. It is the first time such a strong case with a sex worker face being so unapologetically strong willed and well spoken than any woman before her, and a case where someone hasn't yet attempted to murder her so she would silence. I am reminded of the DC madam Deborah Jean Palfrey stood to shake up the White House and then mysteriously hung herself. She lost her life before anyone major lost their job.  I remember when that happened, it seemed like a murder cover up which if Stormy’s safety was threatened by someone in a parking lot when she was a no one in the political game then perhaps her best defense was to be as public as possible so that any sudden suicide would just not fit the bill. There are conspiracy theories that say that Marilyn Monroe was drugged when she died to cover up her affair with JFK. Admist some of the worst things that are happening to sex workers in this country, I seem to feel after the end of my scouring of the Daniels story that she actually succeed in taking the current president out of the White House.

The Worst Sex Work Laws of My Lifetime

The Trump administration is abandoning abandoning Jeff Sessions crusade announced crackdown on recently legalized marijuana because..it has shifted all energy into destroying prostitution in America. While relaxing on the weed laws relieves some of us so that we can medicate while being persecuted, the final fall of the Backpage empire definitely leaves us feeling the same familiar hopelessness that the Trump administration always brings with his stupid grin and photo with his signature on a big bill to destroy your environment, your livelihood your future...Perhaps Stormy Daniel’s is one of our only hopes in this dark dark era of anti sex, fucked over privacy, fucked over freedom of labor choice and outright confiscation of adult autonomy. This is the worst tsunami of change to sex worker laws that I may have seen in my lifetime. There have been some pretty dark times but Trump has not yet disappointed in taking things to a whole new level of shitholeness. Bush and 911 were fairly dark times, and I was younger and more idealistic then, so the fall would have been harder. This, however certainly effects sex workers in ways that none of us have ever seen or prepared for in previous decades. We now have no outlets to advertise and can be busted for the trafficking if you work with a driver, drive a friend to work, or share screened clients and receive a fee for doing so. Before we had to actually get caught in a sting. Now it feels like we live in Sweden and are trying to work under similarly impossible laws.

Apparently, if you had turned in your passport to be verified by Eros, which was just raided in September 2017 you can be banned from even entering the U.S, banned from traveling as a tourist to places like Canada and Japan if the passport has some sort of prostitution ban that has global reach. I read an announcement from a sex worker who entered the U.S and was caught at the border and slapped with a 10 year ban from entering America as a result of some alert on her passport. “What’s Eros for?” the border security asked. Heart and jaw drop on the floor. Many sex workers were hoping that Backpage owners would continue to fight as they always have been but I think finally they were worn thin and just decided to plead guilty and start doing their sentences. They were charged guilty in CA for money laundering and guilty for trafficking in Texas. They did not try to fight it, they pleaded guilty and started there sentence as soon as BP was seized. No Larry Flynt type of victory was going to ensue in 2018 for the Backpage owners, they had been fighting this fight for years already.

If you are wondering if it was all Trump’s doing alone, you are wrong. "In case anyone is wondering who should be president in 2020 based solely on the FOSTA/SESTA vote, it's Barbara Lee, the east bay rep, who voted no. Voted no on the War In Afghanistan in 2001. We used to say "Barbara Lee speaks for me" back then. Guess it's still true.

Not: 
Bernie Sanders
Cory Booker
Elizabeth Warren
Kamala Harris
Kristen Gillabrand
Maxine Waters 
Jimmy Gomez basically every other democrat (except Ron Wyden and 10 other house dems) who all voted Yes"

How Can Medical Marijuana help with the Opioid Abuse and Mortality?

I am a stoner of 20 years with a medical marijuana prescription. While I admittedly smoke for recreational use, there was a string of five or so years that I used marijuana as an antidepressant and I identified as being “chemically depressed.” I tried to get prescribed “real antidepressants” but I was evaluated as not qualified by my local LGBTQ medical clinic. I don’t “have depression” but I do smoke to feel less depressed at times, if that makes sense. It is excellent medicine for me, but I have learned quite well how to use medicines to my advantage. Other people are not naturally introspective, or critical of their doctors or the system and unfortunately many are in situations or states of being not able to control well what is best for their body, mind and souls, which is why there are doctors, lawyers and police officers enlisted to take care of that for those that fall short of solid decision making. The enforcers of your choices are not always right, kind or ethical but what can you do if you can’t do? Nothing. Exactly. The recent Fentanyl overdose problem has created an unforeseen crisis that luckily many of my former heroin/opiate addict friends missed. B was one of them. B is a good friend of mine who is a daily user of cannabis wax and other psychotropics that he calls “plant medicines.” He chose to live in California, a state with legal access to cannabis specifically because he once lived in Ohio and had a wicked painkiller addiction problem. It was plant medicines like Ayauasca that was the gateway that helped him to kick his habit but he and I would agree that it isn’t any substance or plant or pill that can heal you if you are prone to addiction or abuse, it has to do with a desire to change your life and patterns. Some choose Ayuasca for this, others choose 12 step programs. Ayuasca and other plant medicines are illegal and probably won’t see the light of a brick and mortar dispensary with a neon sign in the window like your local medical MJ store but I find that plant medicine retreats were getting quite hip and pretty easy to find access to, even through Facebook event invites! Medical cannabis is for those on the alternative non clean and sober recovery plan and it works out great for a lot of people. Recent research has shown to reveal significant reduction in opioid prescription rates in Kentucky, Minnesota and Illinois. Worldwide studies have conferred in Israel and Mexico who were regular opioid presribed patients reduced usage where cannabis was legal or medical. CC, another former trusted opioid user friend who doesn’t use weed at all tells me,“Opioids are always going to be necessary for higher duty hardcore pain, people too often champion one at the expense of the other when there are so many kinds of pain and so many different kinds of individuals with different needs.” As a habitual weed user, I fully agree and understand this well as I’ve certainly moaned,”I NEED SOMETHING FUCKING STRONGER!!” while in unbearable pain because, if you smoke weed everyday, smoking more weed when you are have some sudden major injury is not going to cut it at all. Going back to the famous but simplified rat park study, in regards to emotional pain needs being met, I think cannabis works better for this type of pain than opioids, but I don't claim to represent all humans or all rats in the park. It’s about giving patients options and trusting that they can make choices. This sounds quite simple but its not, because there will always be some people who don’t like to or simply are unable to make sound or conscious choices at all.

If you murder someone, even yourself, make sure you know what you are doing.

Is suicide just a RESET button? A Facebook friend of mine recently asked me if I had heard of Teal Swan. I had seen a few of her videos but there was something about her presence that was kind of cold and dark, as if she represented a dark energy that I couldn’t really pick up on. She has a huge cult following and says things like “Suicide is a reset button and Death is delicious.” Of course, I didn’t know any of this when I was watching, I read about what she is now known to be about in an article calling her the Gucci Guru. Her words never really captivated me and I found myself distracted with other things while multitasking housework and listening to one of her YouTubes like I usually do many other speakers. I told this friend,”I had never felt really drawn to her. She’s kinda dark. I like her intro cartoon though.” I said, trying to come up with something nice to say. This friend used to come to me during times of suicidal ideations before I drew a boundary and said that I couldn’t hold space for it anymore and that she needed to call a crisis line or seek professional help. I’m sure that she clung to me for a while because I offered a different perspective on suicide that wasn’t usual from a friend in need. I had recently lost a former student of mine to suicide, which was indeed sad because she was so young and surely she was full of light and the furthest thing from seeming suicidal when I knew her. I asked my Facebook then,”Is suicide a conscious choice? Do you support your loved one in making this choice?” and this spurred off a lot of reactions from people, many whom I had never heard from before on my timeline. Some people seemed disturbed that I would even bring up such a topic for discussion. I was really interested in hearing what people thought, especially since Star had just killed herself. Star was a young queer girl in the Gay Straight Alliance club that I started. She was a trailblazer and someone I would describe as truly aware of the choices that she made and a young woman who was fully in her power. For me to see her as some kind of victim just didn’t sit well with me, but the truth was I couldn’t tell with accuracy since I hadn’t actually interacted with her since high school. Suicide most definitely hurts the people around you and creates havoc financially and mentally for your family and everyone else who has to deal with the pieces that you left behind. But such is death. The same pieces are left when someone is shot and killed by a gun wielding teenager in a movie theater or school campus. Because I don’t have a strong conviction AGAINST suicide I imagine people who may be depressed and suicidal feel comfort in that state as they are probably well over tired with hearing the same rhetoric. My advice to my recent friend was similar to a friend getting an abortion. If that is your choice, make sure you understand the choice you are making, and make sure not to fail at it. Nothing worse than these attempted suicides where the person has to be committed and or have permanent scars because a bullet missed or some poison permanently damaged their internal organs. If you are going to murder someone, including yourself, make sure that you have planned it in a way that doesn’t leave a mess for someone else or yourself to deal with. It sounds easy for me to say of course. I can only speak from my biased perspective. When I felt suicidal, I did want things to get better. I was on a slow course of destruction, just putting myself in harm’s way, just begging to be hurt and killed. I took whatever drugs were put in front of me and just swallowed substances without knowing what they were, who was giving them to me and what the consequences might be. I traded sex for a bottle of pills that I hoped was Oxycodone and instead it ended up being Vicodin. I downed about 5 and then ended up throwing them all up for hours over the toilet. It was a weak half assed attempt. Maybe I was saved by a divine force, maybe I was lucky. The plan I had was to overdose on oxycodone, but I only tried that once. I can’t really tell you how I started to slowly move away from the desire to die, but I did. In recent messages, this FB friend tells me she isn’t suicidal anymore and I say,Good. Is it bad to say, that I support people where they are at? Saying suicide is a reset button or that death is delicious is just another radical perspective put out there. It definitely condones it as something “not so bad” which is possibly where Teal and I may be on a similar wave length, although I see my stance as neutral. People we know who are addicted to drugs are seen as slowly killing themselves, so I suppose in all my years of working with drug users is how I arrived where I am. People have their time to die and their time to live. It wasn’t my time to go, else, the pills would have killed me because they would have been the “right” ones. But, turns out the “wrong” ones were the right ones and I can look back at this from a keyboard and sigh, not of relief but just reflection.