A good man is dead.greenspun.com : LUSENET : TB2K spinoff uncensored : One Thread |
Peter McWilliams, author of one of the finest books on freedom I've ever read; "Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do" is dead, long live the war on drugs.Libertarian Party Press Releases
June 17, 2000
Bestselling author Peter McWilliams is "murdered by the War on Drugs"
WASHINGTON, DC -- Peter McWilliams, the #1 bestselling author and medical marijuana activist who was found dead in California on June 14, was murdered by the War on Drugs, the Libertarian Party charged today.
"Peter McWilliams would not be dead today if not for the heartless, lethal War on Drugs," said Steve Dasbach, the party's national director. "The federal government killed Peter McWilliams by denying him the medical marijuana he needed to stay alive as surely as if its drug warriors had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
"Peter McWilliams may be dead, but the causes he so bravely fought for -- access to life-saving medicine, an end to the War on Drugs, and greater freedom for all Americans -- will live on."
On Wednesday, McWilliams was found dead in the bathroom of his Los Angeles home. According to sources, he had choked on his vomit.
McWilliams, 50, had suffered from AIDS and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma since 1996, and had used medical marijuana to suppress the nausea that was a common side-effect to the potent medications needed to keep him alive.
The marijuana was completely legal, thanks to California's Proposition 215, which passed in 1996 and legalized the use of marijuana for treatment of illness. However, in late 1997, McWilliams was arrested by federal drug agents and charged with conspiracy to sell marijuana.
After a federal judge ruled that McWilliams could not mention his illnesses at his trial -- or introduce as evidence any of the documented benefits of medical marijuana -- he pled guilty to avoid a 10-year mandatory-minimum prison sentence.
While out on bail awaiting sentencing, McWilliams was prohibited from using medical marijuana -- and being denied access to the drug's anti-nausea properties almost certainly caused his death, said Dasbach.
"First, the federal government arrested McWilliams for doing something that is 100% legal in California," he said. "Then, they put him on trial and wouldn't allow him to introduce the one piece of evidence that could have explained his actions. Finally, they let him out of jail on the condition that he couldn't use the one medicine that kept him alive.
"What the federal government did to Peter McWilliams is nothing less that cold-blooded, premeditated murder. A good, decent, talented man is dead because of the bipartisan public policy disaster known as the War on Drugs."
Ironically, on June 9, McWilliams appeared on the "Give Me A Break!" segment of ABC Television's 20/20, where host John Stossel noted, "[McWilliams] is out of prison on the condition that he not smoke marijuana, but it was the marijuana that kept him from vomiting up his medication. I can understand that the federal drug police don't agree with what some states have decided to do about medical marijuana, but does that give them the right to just end run those laws and lock people up?
"Give me a break! [It] seems this War on Drugs often does more harm than the drugs themselves."
Five days later, McWilliams was dead.
McWilliams, the owner of Prelude Press, was a multi-million-copy-selling author of How to Survive the Loss of a Love, The Personal Computer Book, and DO IT! Let's Get Off Our Buts (with co-author John-Roger), a #1 New York Times bestseller. He also wrote what is widely considered to be the definitive book against "consensual" crimes, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do.
He joined the Libertarian Party in 1998 following a nationally televised speech at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington, DC.
In that speech, McWilliams said, "Marijuana is the finest anti-nausea medication known to science, and our leaders have lied about this consistently. [Arresting people for] medical marijuana is the most hideous example of government interference in the private lives of individuals. It's an outrage within an outrage within an outrage."
McWilliams' death was also noted by Libertarians in his home state.
"Peter McWilliams was a true hero who fought and ultimately gave his life for what he believed in: The right to heal oneself without government interference," said Mark Hinkle, state chair of the California Libertarian Party.
"His loss opens a gaping hole in the fabric of liberty, but his memory will live on not only in the hearts of grateful Libertarians but also in the lives of the countless patients who will take up the crusade for health freedom."
-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), June 22, 2000
Thanks, Unk.If I may add an inspiring article...
from: Peter McWilliams
FALLEN HEROES
Who Was Peter McWilliams?
by John C. LeGere
(First published on... June 19, 2000)
It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them. Thomas Jefferson, 1779
Back in the first Gipper administration, non-techies were trying to figure out how to make their new computers do something useful: process words, crunch numbers, that kind of thing. Most were making heavy weather of it.
Peter McWilliams, a sometime poet, wrote a few lucid, witty books about how to make Kaypros, Apple IIs, and other prehistoric hardware do one's biddingthis in the days before all those books for dummies and idiots hit the stores (Peter made us feel we weren't really idiots, which is why we liked him).
In 1993, he came out as a libertarian and wrote a stirring pro- individualist tract called Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, taking his title from the late Billy Holiday. She destroyed herself with booze and drugs, but never once puffed herself up with phony Clintonian contrition to ask for anyone's pity. "I never hurt nobody but myself," she said, "and that's nobody's business but my own." The book soft-pedaled the usual abstract arguments from economics and natural rights theory in favor of common sense like Billy's. And it offered a mountain of research about the real damage done to real people by governments obsessed with victimless "crimes." On Independence Day, 1998, Peter spoke at the national convention of the Libertarian Party in DC. In a fiery oration broadcast live across the country he charged that arresting people for use of medical marijuana, "is the most hideous example of government interference in the lives of individuals."
Twenty days after that speech, he was arrested at his home in L.A. and jailed by agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
A poet
The life of Peter McWilliams went like this: he would become interested in somethingout of passion or necessityand would then write about it to share his discoveries with others. At seventeen, he set down his adolescent longings in verse and, at that tender age, published them. He fell into the habit of writing books and has averaged about one per year since his maiden effort some thirty titles altogether.
There were many more volumes of verse, the very successful computer books in the Eighties, and a book of his own photographs. Others were in the lucrative self-help/personal-growth genre, including several best-sellers.
In 1996 he was diagnosed with cancer and with AIDS. He survived a brutal regimen of radiation and chemotherapy; then, to fight the HIV infection, his doctors prescribed the "cocktail" of protease- inhibitors, which works well for some, but not for others. The meds must be taken frequently and on a rigid schedule, say the docs, or the virus will have a chance to mutate. But Peter, like many, was too nauseated to reliably keep them down.
Standard anti-nausea prescriptions failed, but marijuana worked, and he was able to faithfully take his meds and keep the disease at bay for two years.
As with poetry, computers and other subjects, Peter shared this new chapter of his life. In books, lectures and on the Net, he urged the legalization of medical marijuana.
The voters of his state seemed to be inclining the same way. Four years ago they voted for Proposition 215 (now the Compassionate Use Act of 1996), a law that permits California residents to grow, possess and exchange marijuana on a non-profit basis for personal medical use. Unfortunately, the CUA stands athwart federal statutes which say that Californians may not do any of these things.
Everyone shuffled their feet, waiting to see how public opinion, the courts and the politicians would deal with the situation. Medical marijuana lingered in a legal twilight zone; growers and transactors were sometimes harassed, sometimes not. And Peter McWilliams, with his customary passion and eloquence, kept arguing his case, a conspicuous irritant to General McCaffrey's DEA and reformed potheads- in-power like Bill Clinton.
The medical community had been coming around. In 1997, the highly- respected New England Journal of Medicine editorialized: "Virtually no one thinks it is reasonable to initiate criminal prosecution of patients with cancer or AIDS who use marijuana on the advice of their physicians to help them through conventional medical treatment for their disease."
Selective prosecution
Unfortunately, that "no one" did not include the federal prosecutor and grand jury that indicted Peter McWilliams.
He had grown and possessed cannabis for his own use to treat AIDS. He also advanced money to a fellow activist, to finance the writing of a book; the money was used to grow still more medical marijuana.
Arguably, all of these acts were legal under California law, but all were reckoned vile crimes by the Feds, for which they proposed to put Peter McWilliams in prison for the rest of his life.
Then there was that pro-marijuana book he was working ontwo years of writing on hard disks that were whisked away by federal agents at six- thirty AM and never seen againa government assault on free speech that the New York Times crowd would get all lathered up about had it befallen some more acceptable scrivener like Salman Rushdie, under Reagan, but which causes nary a ripple when a McWilliams is the victim and the sponsor is the Clinton Justice Department.
That this was a selective prosecution of an articulate dissenter can never be proven and will, of course, never be admitted.
Oh, yes, and that absolutely essential schedule of medication that Peter had been religiously following and which had staved off full- blown AIDS for two yearsany interruption of which could, according to the docs, be fatal? His jailers, the prosecutor and the judge between them seem to have conspired to deprive him of his meds for more than four days after his arrest, while this dangerous character sojourned in lockup with the scum of Los Angeles County.
Peter McWilliams was unjustly prosecuted. No government operating within its proper sphere of rights-protection is empowered to concern itself with what citizens choose to ingest or imbibe, so long as they don't endanger others and so long as they do accept responsibility for the consequences of their own choices.
Political reflections are unavoidable in light of what was done to Peter McWilliams. But it is wrong to think of any person as just an embodied cause celebre. Peter was a unique, multi-talented man who would probably have preferred not to go to war with his own government, if only they had just guarded his liberties and let him live his life, instead of doing their barbarous best to keep him from effectively healing himself.
Champion of joy
Like all of us, Peter strove against despair; he championed joy and fought for it with the tools of a writer, enlisting millions of allies he never met. "Happiness is not easy," he wrote. "It's not for the weak, the timid, the wishy-washy, the easily dissuaded, or the uncertain. Happiness is not for wimps."
It's hard to say whether the heartbreaking stress of the last two years directly hastened Peter's death, and it might be better not to give his tormentors the satisfaction of assuming that it did. No one was less interested in being a martyr. What can be said with assurance is that his will not be the last life so blighted while Americans permit their government to promulgate and enforce these insane laws.
To embrace reason and individualism is not to disavow our obligations to one another, but rather to put them on a proper footing and to understand their real importance. To honor the individual requires that we recognize the dignity and humanity of our brothers and sisters, that we not turn away when their rights are violated, their lives are smashed, by people acting under the color of law. It must stop. We must stop it.
Peter McWilliams was a poet, and so I offer a bit of poetry in conclusionwell-known but apposite, Christian in idiom, but universal.
Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris - "Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me: Thou must die."
Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that....
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.John Donne
John C. LeGere is a contributing editor of The Daily Objectivist.
-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), June 22, 2000.
The Onion??
-- (gimme@break.com), June 22, 2000.
The Onion? No, Gimme, this one's for real, and a good man is dead because a federal judge decided to act like a dictator instead of a member of a democracy. I'm really hoping there's a hereafter harsh enough for that esteemed legal scholar.
-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), June 22, 2000.
Cash,The "hit-and-runs" usually have no reasons...else they would stand here and give them.
-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), June 22, 2000.
We've had this discussion before, when Mr. Williams was pre-Styxian.He wasn't arrested for USING MJ, but for growing LOTS of it. To say he wasn't a criminal is baloney.
He wasn't trying to just "heal himself", unless he was planning on living to 500 years old and using his current MJ crop for all that time, selling it or lighting up SF is more like it.
Sorry, too bad he had to die, but I can't see calling him some kind of martyr.
Frank
-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), June 22, 2000.
Williams could have huffed one bong load after another and nobody would have cared except he went big time public. His choice.What we need is smokable Marinol. Havn't seen an Rx for the pills in at least ten years cause it's like eating brownies. The patient has to live with it all day and it won't ramp up when you need it. Certain RJR could lace some Marlboros if the there was enough interest.
-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), June 22, 2000.
Carlos,Give an AIDS patient another good reason to contract a hard-to-get-rid-of pneumonia. Not a great idea IMO.
On Marinol, nothing's quite as funny as a teenager complaining of nausea and then saying, "Do you think Marinol would help me?"
Frank
-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), June 22, 2000.
Frank, a hit is quick while a pill takes forever and lasts what seems like forever. Most chemo folks aint puffers. If there was enough interest a better product would be out there. For now my advice to those in need is to grow and blow in private.
-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), June 22, 2000.
Frank,So if he wasn't selling or planning to sell any of it, you'd have agreed with the essays then?
-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), June 22, 2000.
Eve, No. Specifically,"Peter McWilliams would not be dead today if not for the heartless, lethal War on Drugs,"
MJ isn't oxygen, its absence didn't cause his death.
The federal government killed Peter McWilliams by denying him the medical marijuana he needed to stay alive as surely as if its drug warriors had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
Crap. You could kill anyone with a handgun, you can't kill anyone by not letting them smoke MJ.
On Wednesday, McWilliams was found dead in the bathroom of his Los Angeles home. According to sources, he had choked on his vomit.
This is where I think ***THE BIG LIE*** is. How does a SOBER, ambulatory adult choke to death on their own vomit? My guess is the part they're NOT saying is that he was seriously intoxicated at the time.
McWilliams was arrested by federal drug agents and charged with conspiracy to sell marijuana. ...-- he pled guilty to avoid a 10-year mandatory-minimum prison sentence. While out on bail awaiting sentencing, McWilliams was prohibited from using medical marijuana
Again, he wasn't even prohibited from *using* it until he was found guilty of *conspiracy to sell* it. And let's face it, L.A. juries aren't overly hang-em-high, for him to plead guilty, he must have been REALLY guilty.
Ironically, on June 9, McWilliams appeared on the "Give Me A Break!" segment of ABC Television's 20/20, where host John Stossel noted, "[McWilliams] is out of prison on the condition that he not smoke marijuana, but it was the marijuana that kept him from vomiting up his medication.
Did he *try* the ***newer*** anti-nausea meds? Sure doesn't sound like it. Just some nutcase who wants what he wants no matter what.
taking his title from the late Billy Holiday. She destroyed herself with booze and drugs, but never once puffed herself up with phony Clintonian contrition to ask for anyone's pity. "I never hurt nobody but myself," she said, "and that's nobody's business but my own."
As an editorial (as compared with the rest of my post :-) ) This is another big lie. Someone drinks themselves to death and says they're only affecting themselves? What about their families and the people who care for them? Maybe she's not *responsible* for them all, but they are sure affected by her actions.
Standard anti-nausea prescriptions failed, but marijuana worked,
This would go against my earlier suspicions, if they said what a "standard" anti-nausea medicine was, and what doses he took.
The medical community had been coming around. In 1997, the highly- respected New England Journal of Medicine editorialized: "Virtually no one thinks it is reasonable to initiate criminal prosecution of patients with cancer or AIDS who use marijuana on the advice of their physicians to help them through conventional medical treatment for their disease."
Again, he wasn't using it, he pled guilty to growing it **for sale**.
while this dangerous character sojourned in lockup with the scum of Los Angeles County.
This cracked me up. A martyr placed in with the SCUM OF L.A. COUNTY. I would have thought they were ALL unjustly accused by the system, why is everyone in jail scum but him?
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.John Donne
As "Donne is Done", I guess I can hash this up a bit. Put together with "no man is a island, we are all a part of the main", I think a better metaphor would be that we are all leaves on the same tree, most are decent and contribute to the welfare of the tree, but some are infected, and would best be plucked by a caring gardener before they infect and kill the tree that nourishes all of them.
In summary, nope, still don't feel sorry for him. The only articles here are those that are GROSSLY editorials in support of him. I tried a quick search for counter-arguments, but just found tons of this stuff. If you've got a good counter-article to these, I'd be happy to read it, and maybe (depending on what they come up with) would soften my opinion a bit.
Frank
Frank
-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), June 23, 2000.
From: Health Freedom, ` la Carte (pic), near Monterey, CaliforniaMcWilliams is a spiritual decendent of William Wallace. While choking on vomit is not as macho as screaming "Freedom!," this gentle man went out in a blaze of glory, every bit as much ripped to shreds by his government.
-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), June 23, 2000.
Frank,Thanks for your response.
What if the MJ really just relieved his nausea, and thus raised his quality of life, in ways that other drugs could not?
A drug or alcohol addict's family may or may not be adversely affected by his/her death. Regardless, do you feel that the taxpayer has an obligation to mitigate the effects of someone's drug- related death on their families? In other words, do you believe that this is a good reason for the "war on drugs?"
Dancr,
Nice tie to William Wallace. Thanks.
-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), June 23, 2000.
Unk, sorry but no can buy this guy being a hero or killed by the Gubmint.Frank, with you all the way on this one.
Tracie, I now know you are truly a whacked-out weirdo. Looks like they still have the good shrooms up there on the peninsula.
-- Ra (tion@l.1), June 23, 2000.
Eve, you said,What if the MJ really just relieved his nausea, and thus raised his quality of life, in ways that other drugs could not?
For most terminally ill patients, I'd have no problem with them taking whatever they want. After all, we give them morphine which is much stronger than pot. And I sure wouldn't jail someone for (pot). There's a big difference though between him growing a plant to treat himself, and growing an acre to pay for his lifestyle.
A drug or alcohol addict's family may or may not be adversely affected by his/her death.
This is your opinion, and I respect that, but much like with abortion, I'd rather err on the side of caution and protect the innocent.
Regardless, do you feel that the taxpayer has an obligation to mitigate the effects of someone's drug- related death on their families? In other words, do you believe that this is a good reason for the "war on drugs?"
No, not as you've phrased it, but a drug-related death's effect on the family isn't the only social effect of the alcoholic/IVDAer. For years these people can be on .gov assistance and use up hospital resources, lost productivity at work, etc. Drug abuse is a BAD thing. If you can prove to me that they DON'T affect society, that they only affect themselves and in their downward spiral don't cost the taxpayer anything, then I'll callously say "go ahead, make your day".
Frank
-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), June 23, 2000.
Frank,Do you have any medical training?
> On Wednesday, McWilliams was found dead in the bathroom of his Los Angeles home. According to sources, he had choked on his vomit.
> This is where I think ***THE BIG LIE*** is.
No, this is where _your_ ***BIG IGNORANCE*** lies.
>How does a SOBER, ambulatory adult choke to death on their own vomit?
As I _SOBERLY_ found out several years ago: all too easily.
You ever heard of "acid reflux disease"? It's not just an advertising gimmick.
I hope you never find yourself waking up from a sound _SOBER_ (or nonsober, for that matter) sleep with vomit filling your esophagus. About the twentieth time it happened to me, I mistakenly tried to take a breath just as I was about to reach the lavatory.
Immediately the stinging vomit was in my breathing tubes (went down "the wrong way"), and for the first time in my life I found out that the human body has a reflex action for such a situation: my breathing shifted into a rapid in-and-out shallow pattern that I'd never experienced before in my life -- a very rapid panting that I can't really emulate voluntarily. I was unable to break this pattern, unable to attempt to either take in or let out a _deep_ breath. The rapid panting was not allowing me to get any fresh air into my lungs.
I thought of calling 911, and started to turn back toward the phone which was at the diagonally-opposite corner of the bedroom whose door was next to the bathroom. I realized I couldn't talk, but could tap SOS on the mouthpiece. (Excuse all these details; ones perceptions and memory become more acute in such a situation, and the story might be instructive to others.) But I felt myself getting faint from lack of oxygen, and began lowering myself to the floor so I wouldn't fall.
It occured to me that I could die this way, and that this was what happened to people who died from "inhaling their own vomit" -- that really, genuinely, could be what was about to happen to me.
As I was about down to the floor, one of my out-pantings dislodged some vomit, then I used the remaining air in my lungs to cough out some more, and was able to inhale a bit of air. After some more wheezing and coughing-up, breath came more readily, and gradually I got back to a normal breathing rhythm.
I discussed this episode with my doctor. He confirmed my deductions about it, and advised me to take better precautions to avoid acid reflux during sleep.
I had many more episodes of acid reflux, though. During one of them, I again inhaled vomit, and again came close to losing consciousness before that reflex panting cleared my lungs. After that second close call, I realized I had not seriously taken all the steps my doctor recommended. Since then I've taken more precautions and have had less acid reflux and no serious inhalations.
I was never intoxicated (having not consumed any alcohol or THC for multiple years beforehand), not even once, during any of those episodes. OTOH, it is possible that some of my legal prescription medications either exacerbated the acid reflux or interfered with my ability to fully awaken in those emergency situations.
>My guess is the part they're NOT saying is that he was seriously intoxicated at the time.
Please do less guessing and more research. Your bias is showing.
-- No Spam Please (nos_pam_please@hotmail.com), June 23, 2000.
RANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Who gives a fuck if dude man smoked dope or not,if it was for his health or for his friggin jollies,what business is it of yours?
Who made you the fuckin' judge and overseer of the land and its people?
Pathetic busy bodies,get a fuckin' life, or isn't yours satisfying enough???
Same thing goes for the feds(notice no caps) ain't they got better things to do than pick on a little ol' pot smoker?
Cyber terrorism,terrorism in general,world terrorism etc....etc...the list goes on and on,WHY fuck with the little guy minding his own fucking business???
Yea you don't mind being all high and mighty until it's something that affects YOU and then we should all rush to your aid,it's a two way street you spineless,characterless,integrity challenged,honor deprived people,I hope your'e never in a bad way,cause anyone can act like they are above the fray.Until they are the fray.
Smoke a BIG ONE and chill out : )
-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), June 23, 2000.
Thank you for sharing that detailed story NSP. I too have experienced the same thing and thought I was going to die. If you don't mind,,,,would you please tell us what your Dr told you to do to eliminate the reflux when lying down?
-- (Pepto@Bismol.drinker), June 23, 2000.
I seem to recall a study a number of years ago by the University of Michigan Medical School about the use of marijuana for chemo therapy patients. The point of the study was to determine if the common side effects of nausea and lack of appetite could be lessened.Unfortunately, the study found that marijuana in pill form (tetrahydracannibinol, THC) was not effective but smoking marijuana was. (Big DUH here, taking a pill to stop vomiting doesn't work because the medication is rejected by the symptom you are trying to treat.) Smoking marijuana was proven to reduce nausea, improve appetite (can we all say "munchies") and improve disposition. Unfortunately, this is not the result that was desired by the government agency funding the research and funding was promptly terminated.
The potential humanitarian benefits were sacrificed to the ever burgeoning bureaucratic agency budgets and the draconion property confiscation laws that fuel the drug war monster in our government.
The "War on Drugs" isn't, it's a war on freedom, and we're losing.
-- Greybeard7 (Wolverine_in_nc@hotmail.com), June 23, 2000.
No Spam,Aren't YOU guessing a bit? I haven't seen anywhere that they said he had acid reflux disease, and since you're posting here, it's pretty obvious that you DID NOT die! Do you know of ANYONE who HAS died from acid reflux or again any ambulatory adult who was cold sober who DID die from aspirating his own vomit?
I'm sorry it was frightening for you, but you're here. He isn't -- my Lunacology opinion is that he was too stoned to roll over. As I posted earlier, I couldn't find any data from other than his supporters, so how am I to know for sure? I assume his medical records are confidential.
Cap'nfun,
remind me to stay off your cruise ship, that's not quite MY idea of a good time :-( . And why are you so down on terrorists? What's it to you if they blow up some corporations property or spike trees or crash computers? Lighten up.
Frank
-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), June 24, 2000.
Pepto@Bismol.drinker,First let me say that (A) I don't have formal medical training, (B) my doctor's advice to me may not have covered factors that could apply to someone else but which were not present in my case (there's more than one cause for acid reflux), and (C) I'm sure I've forgotten some detail(s); what I present here is my own advice, not all of which came from my doctor.
My advice:
1. Consult with your doctor about your acid reflux, to learn what causes yours and what best you can do to avoid it.
2. As a general rule, to eliminate the reflux, you need to eliminate the cause(s) of it, which might not be the same as the cause(s) of someone else's reflux. See advice #1.
3. Do not go to sleep within a short time of eating a meal. The bigger the meal, the longer you should stay awake (or at least upright) to allow the stomach to process it and empty it into your intestines, before you go to sleep.
4. Make your last meal before sleeping a small one, not large, if at all possible.
5. Sleep with your head and chest elevated above your stomach. The idea is to arrange for gravity to help keep any acid reflux from flowing up your esophagus.
6. There are medicines which can help suppress acid reflux. Consult with your doctor about whether any of them are appropriate for you. Note that I place this advice after the nonmedicinal #3, #4, and #5 -- that is based upon my own personal circumstances. Your doctor may place different emphasis on medicine because of your own circumstances.
7. In consultation with your doctor, find out whether any medicines (prescription or over-the-counter) you are taking might have side effects which affect your acid reflux. Read all the "fine print" that came with all your medicines.
-- No Spam Please (nos_pam_please@hotmail.com), June 24, 2000.
Frank,I didn't realize that you would need to be explicitly told that acid reflux is not the only cause of vomiting, nor that death from inhalation of vomit does not particularly depend on the root cause of the vomiting. Once vomit is in ones lungs, whether the vomit arose from acid reflux, nausea, or any other cause becomes pretty irrelevant to ones survival.
>Aren't YOU guessing a bit? I haven't seen anywhere that they said he had acid reflux disease,
Nor did you see anywhere that _I_ wrote that McWilliams had acid reflux disease.
I presented my personal case, which did involve acid reflux, as an answer to your question about the relationship of sobriety and ambulation to death by choking on vomit. No guessing involved.
>and since you're posting here, it's pretty obvious that you DID NOT die!
Most assuredly I twice came close to dying.
>Do you know of ANYONE who HAS died from acid reflux or again any ambulatory adult who was cold sober who DID die from aspirating his own vomit?
a) Whether acid reflux caused the vomit is only secondarily relevant to death from inhalation of vomit. I present it as an example of a cause which can occur in a sober ambulatory adult.
b) Yes, I know of someone (who AFAIK was sober and ambulatory at the time) who died from inhalation of vomit, but more relevant than my single example is that I have read that it is not an especially rare cause of death.
>I'm sorry it was frightening for you, but you're here. He isn't -- my Lunacology opinion is that he was too stoned to roll over.
Egad -- are you saying that you won't believe me unless I or someone else communicates to you after having so died? Skepticism can be carried too far. (I am unfamiliar with "Lunacology".)
-- No Spam Please (nos_pam_please@hotmail.com), June 24, 2000.
testing
-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), June 24, 2000.
No Spam - It's a losing battle with Frankie-Boy. Don't waste your breath. Even though his logic *isn't*, he'll defend his stupidity and obvious lack of life experience to the death in the hopes of gleefully yanking your chain in the process. Don't let him. It makes his head grow bigger and the sound of that pea-brain rattlin' around in all that empty space is worse than Chinese water-torture. Ping...loooooong pause...ping...looooooong pause...ping...loooooong pause...Personally, I think McWilliams belongs on the "Heroes" thread from a few weeks back. He fought to make a difference in people's lives - people who were *suffering* - and he paid the ultimate price for his passion and efforts.
-- LunaC (Laughing@FrankDumbAss.com), June 24, 2000.
No Spam,It's not that I don't believe you, it's that I've never heard of an adult *without* some other big-time problem dying from aspiration, unless they were on a ventilator, or had an NG tube or something and were too out of it to cough it out.
My point on McWilliams is that the articles go out of their way to mention his AIDS and lymphoma, if he HAD some diagnosed problem such as reflux that could contribute to his aspirating, I'm sure they'd mention that too. Therefore, I assume he didn't, since it wasn't mentioned.
I would be very interested to hear the details of the person you know who was sober, fully aware and ambulatory and without something like a TE fistula who did die of aspiration. Like I said, I haven't heard of it.
Oh and Lunacology is just a Joke, like "astrology".
Frank
-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), June 24, 2000.
No Spam,I've tried Harrison's, and doing an internet search on "vomit(ting), aspiration, death, and even acid reflux", and can't find anything on otherwise healthy adults **dying** from it. Please if you have a source or actual case, present it.
Frank
-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), June 24, 2000.
Oh and Lunacology is just a Joke, like "astrology".Tell it to Mitterrand.
-- LunaC (Laughing@FrankieBoy.duh), June 24, 2000.
Lunacy,Just because Mitterrand is a fool, that doesn't mean you have to be.
Frank
-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), June 24, 2000.
Most of you know that my worldview is fundamentally Christian. I do not use drugs, and think that it is harmful to body and soul to do so. That said, I believe that drugs should be legalized. They were for a very long time, and people either chose to use or not.... a basic freedom. I agree that the 'war on drugs' is a joke. Drugs seem as rampant as ever, but we have additional unnecessary problems because of the illegality. I think legalizing drugs would put many lowlifes out of business. It is my opinion that not only do many in our government and law enforcement etc. use drugs, but that our government has been secretly involved with the sale and transfer of drugs. Hypocrisy on the highest level. People in power snort or whatever, and don't blink an eye at slamming the peons behind bars. Let the money go instead to drug education. I'm not a Libertarian, because I believe they operate on the error that there can be an orderly society without morality. On the drug issue, I agree with most Libertarians. I am definitely against abortion also, but I don't believe that making them illegal is the answer that most hope it would be. Again, I believe that information as to the reality of abortion, and the often ensuing complications and problems is the way to go. If drugs lead to illegal behavior that violates the rights of others, then that behavior should be dealt with by our legal system. Put the money poured down the useless 'war on drugs' black hole into inexpensive rehab, and I believe more people would kick it. Regarding acid reflux, I also confirm that it is real, unpleasant and dangerous. I suffered from acid reflux during my last few pregnancies. It is a frightening thing to wake up feeling vomit choke you. My nephew almost died from acid reflux. It was my understanding that Peter's illness brought about the acid reflux. What is the big deal in letting a dying man relieve his symptoms and possibly prolong his life? Just my opinions on the drug issue.
-- Mumsie (shezdremn@aol.com), June 25, 2000.
From: Marijuana, ` la Carte, by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, CaliforniaFrank asked: How does a SOBER, ambulatory adult choke to death on their own vomit? My guess is the part they're NOT saying is that he was seriously intoxicated at the time.
I don't have any information about whether or not McWilliams was sober, however, if he was not, then there's every likelihood that intoxication could be caused by the legally prescribed drugs that he was taking.
Mr. McWilliams was not able to walk well. He was wheelchair bound. Speaking as someone who also is occasionally wheelchair bound, I know that he may have needed assistance to get into the chair. Apparently, he crawled to the bathroom, something I've been known to do myself.
Even if he walked that time, once he had fallen, he was in a horizontal position in which it is possible to choke on vomit. It is not necessary to be "falling down drunk" to fall down, particularly for those in late stages of cancer.
One doesn't have to have acid reflux disease (which I also have), to trigger vomiting. The condition for which he had been prescribed marijuana was that he was not keeping his medicine down. This is reportedly what caused the vomiting in his case.
Frank again: He wasn't trying to just "heal himself", unless he was planning on living to 500 years old and using his current MJ crop for all that time, selling it or lighting up SF is more like it.
Under compassionate use, in California law, it is not illegal for non-profit organizations to grow and sell marijuana to people who have a health need for it. All that is necessary is any doctor's opinion that the individual could benefit from the use of marijuana. It is not necessary to specify how, or to demonstrate that one has exhausted all other alternatives.
One of my doctors has repeatedly encouraged me to use marijuana for pain control. If it were only me who would be affected by draconian police, I would do it. In my case, however, my husband and son would also be dragged under by any persecution.
McWilliams is a hero because he was willing to stand up to federal goons. It was only because they could come after his family that he agreed to stop. From all accounts, he was as good as his word. Even if he had not choked on his vomit, he was still going to die soon, because he could not keep his medicine down.
-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), June 25, 2000.
LunaC,Thank you for your kindness and concern. You may set your mind at ease -- we're all here voluntarily. :-)
-- No Spam Please (nos_pam_please@hotmail.com), June 25, 2000.
Joan, while it is true that drugs were at one time legal the world was a far different place than it is today. As most of you may know, cocaine was legal in this country until, I believe 1906 (1911 in Canada), and was one of the ingredients in Coca-Cola and many health elixirs of the time. Some of these snake oil remedies had such a high concentration of cocaine that one little swig would change ones attitude in seconds. Of course folks became seriously addicted and the evils of coke were finally responsible for it becoming a highly controlled substance. And yes it was (and still is) the drug of the wealthy. Back then, only a select segment of the population even knew about it, let alone had access to it.I will not attempt to sponsor our current effort known so fondly as the war on drugs. However, to remove the legal restraints on drug usage would, IMHO, destroy this country in a few short years. To think otherwise is to have misplaced faith in the current population of the U.S.
Tracie, buy a 'clapper'.
-- Ra (tion@l.1), June 25, 2000.