Sorry to get off the subject here but I've gotta respond to one of Moose's recent comments with a short story of a very bad drug experience I had as a much younger person. It wasn't me who had the drug problem, but it was my best friend who did and his story was helpful for a couple of other drug addicted friends I've had down through the years; so it might be worth repeating here.
ANd I don't want to infer that you have this problem, Moose, but you brought the subject up and something here might be of help to others.
For you younger guys who don't like this type of shit, I simply say, "Move on and find a topic that is more amusing."
Moose, you just said something that snapped my memory banks to strict attention and I gotta tell ya a related story even though you may not need this story to survive or even to simply improve, or wotever!
You stated earlier that you " ... had the cath for 3.5 years, from 1991 to 94 after crushing my leg. They had to wean me off very slowly. I was physician-induced addicted....."
My best friend had a similar experience a long while back. He was a serious athlete, high school student, and teen age bodybuilder who won a major teen age contest in California. And he had his own radio show that was all about being a teenager in California. He was the kind of guy that every mother and father wanted their kid to be.
While training for an upcoming contest he suffered a serious injury to his spine and was hospitalized for a long period of time and eventually released fully dependent on morphine and other drugs that were prescribed to relieve the pain. In addition to those drugs he was required to ware a full back brace 24/7.
Needless to say, his active lifestyle hit the wall and came to a full stop.
He simply became a complaining observer of other peoples active lifestyle (Sound familiar?) And over the next year or so there was no sign of recovery whatsoever.
So one day he is sitting on the beach in his body cast and I'm heading in his direction after a two hour dive in an unsuccessful search for lobsters/longusta. He is bummed out because all he can do is sit and he wants to dive with the rest of us. He is on the verge of crying, so I told him to stand up, which he did, and I proceeded to remove his body brace. He simply said, "Hey! I can't stand up without this thing." So I just said, "That's OK, just lean on me and I'll get ya in that water so you can stop this damn-crying-feeling-sorry-for-yourself-shit!"
So he reluctantly did the leaning while I did the walking and we eventually got just about waist deep in the water. And then I pushed him over and he fell beneath the sea with a surprised look and came back up with a huge smile upon his face.
"Damn! You scared the shit out of me, but this feels great. And I can float!"
"Yea, but it's the swimming that you want to do. So start swimming!"
And 20 minutes later we were more than 100 yards off shore conversing about how great life was without a body brace. How great it felt to be mobile. How great it felt not to be bitching and moaning in a body brace. How great life was going to be from now on out.
And 20 minutes later we were back in waist deep water and I asked him to walk up to the beach as far as he could go and I'd lend a helping hand when it was needed.
And sure enough, he didn't need no help from me and made it back to his bodybrace unassisted.
And I had to beg him to put that damn brace back on and we'd come back tomarrow and do this same thing all over again.
And we followed that simple routine for a week or so and on that last day, on that last walk from the shoreline to the brace, he took that brace and threw it in the nearest garbage-can while some of the surfers who realized what was happening gave a rousing cheer.
And that's the good part of this story, but there's more to come. The brace was gone but the drugs still had a hold. An extremely stong hold with no intent of letting go.
