drugs...

www.dictionary.com defines drug as:

"A chemical substance... that affects the central nervous system, causing changes in behavior and often addiction."

I was just thinking how this morning I woke up with a terrible headache. We're talking pretty hardcore, and I know it lasted all night. I remember waking up to go to the bathroom and being amazed that my head was hurting so bad. I've been with Nikki long enough to know that I was supposed to worry that it was a result of my having contracted bacterial meningitis. I knew in the dead of night that my chances of actually getting the disease are slim-to-none, but it never hurts to worry. It's really easy in the dark.

So this morning I took my shower and ate a Toaster Strudel and off to work we went. Nine to five chumps. We stopped at the top-notch Conoco and I got a caffiene-laden beverage. I don't have a headache anymore. It just got my little body going. In fact, I'm pretty sure a lot of cold/flu medicines (not the ones that make you groggy and dry out your nose) are just a concoction of ibuprofen and caffiene. It's a pretty great drug, and National Geographic just did a good article about it a few months ago.

But it seems like the term drug can be applied across the board to an awful lot of stuff. It just needs to be a chemical substance that affects the central nervous system. It seems to me like our behavior is simply a product of drugging, both from internal and external sources.

Environmental factors cause certain glands to pump out all kinds of chemical substances that definitely affect our nervous systems. I get nervous that I've offended somebody and I feel the adrenalin pumping around in my veins. It definitely changes my behavior. I'm drugged up by my own biological defense mechanisms. A victim?

I feel bad for people who have serious imbalances in their body's chemistry. It seems that their behavior is dramatically influenced by certain prevalant chemical substances. If somebody sneaks a whole load of lortab into my meal and I gobble it up, can I be blamed for ending up groggy and out-of-touch? I don't think that I can be held personally responsible.

I believe in a God who will "reward" us in the after-life according to our actions in this life. The nitty gritty of it I don't know, but it's kind of irrelevant. My point is that our actions are so often influenced by a cocktail of drugs, and it helps me to remember that it is NEVER my place to pass any sort of god-like judgement on a person.

Duh. Obvious, right? I don't know exactly where I was going. Besides, there has to be some amount of personal responsibility in the picture, I just don't know where to safely draw the line. Luckily, it's not my place.