I’ve been here for around 8 years. In that time I’ve personally witnessed 3 foreigners go insane…who were “ok” before they came here.
The first one was the guy I moved here with. He was a very hard worker…he developed extremely sever breathing problems due to the polution here…and had to move back to Canada. He got into pot while in Taiwan…and I’m sure that was a factor. A few months after getting back to Canada he was institutionalized for bi-polar disorder. To be honest drugs might not have played a big part in his mental downfall, or maybe they were the trigger. But the next two stories are a bit more obvious.
Second one was a gorgeous black girl whose boyfriend was a friend of mine. He smoked pot everyday all day. He introduced it to her…and when she smoked she would often “fall into darkness” and be unable to see. She then developed some odd paranoias and burned her passport. She couldn’t hold down a job and eventually got put into a detention center for foreigners…she lived there for months and months before being sent back to her home country.
Third one…is going on right now. Foreigner gets himself addicted to a harder drug (not pot) and slowly starts to lose his hold on reality. He quits his job saying that he will “live off of the love he has for all things”. He makes his Taiwanese girlfriend call him “God”. He goes to her workplace…an illegal casino and tells her to tell the patrons to give him their money as he is their god…and they therefore are his servants. He destroys all of his earthly possesions in one of his “spiritual” moments by setting his apartment on fire.
Over the last 3 months he’s lost about 40 pounds and he was very slim to begin with. His parents have been in contact with the Taiwanese police and they want him picked up and sent home (he overstayed his visa a long time ago). One of his few remaining friends said that they’re going to trick him into their car and take him to the police station to turn him in.
The problem with marijuana for drug dealers is that it’s not addictive. Since it’s illegal anyway, you’re not likely to know if they are putting a little something extra on the pot such as PCP or Formaldehyde, or spraying something on it to make it look better or have a more pronounced psychoactive effect (because it’s poison). The dealers want to maximize their profits, not provide high purity marijuana.
As for that ongoing foreigner story, wow, it is really an interesting one. Sounds like he’s going to be out of the picture soon, whether it’s from the weight loss, deportation or the courts system. I wish the best for him.
[quote=“twocs”]The problem with marijuana for drug dealers is that it’s not addictive. Since it’s illegal anyway, you’re not likely to know if they are putting a little something extra on the pot such as PCP or Formaldehyde, or spraying something on it to make it look better or have a more pronounced psychoactive effect (because it’s poison). The dealers want to maximize their profits, not provide high purity marijuana.
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i would wager with confidence you are not talking from experience t. in fact serious marijuana users–in other words a dealer’s best customers–will know right away if something is strange. as in most other businesses providing a quality product will be rewarded. what you are saying might be true in a ghetto drive by kind of situation but in taiwan where everyone knows everyone else that is far far from what you have.
such stories are nothing new. drugs never help the mentally imbalanced and their prevalance among the foreign community here is probably a factor but i would say by far the main one is simply separation from the familiar.
such things are easily obtainable here and don’t have to be added to anything. first one you mention is a pretty likely culprit in this kind of situation.
If Mordeth says he’s known three people who came to Taiwan and later suffered from mental problems I believe it, but I feel it’s largely coincidence and perhaps partly because anyone who chooses to come live in Taiwan is a little different from others, Taiwan is a very different living environment than the West, and this is the second most densely populated country on earth – when too many rats are crammed in a cage, some of them start going bonkers. Nonetheless, I’ve been here six years and I don’t know anyone who anyone who anyone who anyone who. . .
Sounds like some wacky story told by your pastor. Anyway, it’s complete nonsense. Pot is not some mysterious chemical. It’s simply the beautiful buds of a plant and any pot smoker can tell the difference between good buds and shit. Dealers have absolutely no incentive to lace buds with toxic, expensive, hard to come by chemicals that would expose them to greater costs and legal exposure and turn away customers. They don’t do that. Whoever told you that is hallucinating.
From the sounds of it, a crazy WaiGuoRen smashed something up.
Mordeth might get to add a 4rth one to his list soon. I seem to be losing it. I have developed the ability to have a complete mood swing in less than a second. As the boss is still probably trying to figure out what happened last night to switch me from “laughing at the bar” to “storming out the door” in less than a minute.
I think this place can take its toll on some. It’s also easier to let yourself go in the relative anonymity in which we live our lives here. It sometimes becomes a twisted contest to race to the bottom. Some foreigners feel they are more acclimatized when they can display more of the habits of the local farm folk than their fellow expat. Somebody posted on another board to the effect: “Wanna know how long I’ve been here? I drive a blue truck.” Good for you, mate.
I can’t find it by searching now, but I remember reading here about some foreign guy that went around squeaking like a porpoise because his brain had been more or less fried by ecstasy or some other drug. So there’s a fourth (or fifth) case.
If you count alcohol as a drug in this context, I’ve known a few expats who cracked up with the help of a bottle–but that was more symptomatic of existing problems that were only exacerbated by coming to Taiwan in the first place.
So you know all of the fertilizers and pesticides the growers used? Somehow I doubt it. And it may be that the marijuana users in Taiwan are sophisticated connoisseurs of fine bud but it would surprise me. I was guessing that half the people looking for dope here would be ex-pot heads who would smoke anything they could get there hands on. Then again I’ve never smoked pot in Taiwan so what do I know? I hope you are right that there is quality product available here.
By the way, anybody who says marijuana isn’t addictive is crazy. LOTS of people get addicted to pot with mild-severe depression being the most common withdrawal symptom.
So you know all of the fertilizers and pesticides the growers used? Somehow I doubt it. And it may be that the marijuana users in Taiwan are sophisticated connoisseurs of fine bud but it would surprise me. I was guessing that half the people looking for dope here would be ex-pot heads who would smoke anything they could get there hands on. Then again I’ve never smoked pot in Taiwan so what do I know? I hope you are right that there is quality product available here.
By the way, anybody who says marijuana isn’t addictive is crazy. LOTS of people get addicted to pot with mild-severe depression being the most common withdrawal symptom.[/quote]
all i’m saying is that dealers are not likely spraying pcp etc. on it as was said. i agree with you on it’s addictive properties. hardly heroin or even nicotine but it still is.
I’m a little confused. What do you mean by that?[/quote]
I think he means that the girl was brought here as a very young age…hooked on drugs…then used as a sex tool by more than one foreigner. But to be honest the her first boyfriend seemed to treat her pretty well…and I’ve only have hearsay for what happend after that. Maybe he meant someone should pay for what was done to her.
[quote] as this chick a singer/model/flowerpot DJ who just sort of disappeared one day? /quote]
Her native language was French. She modeled with me once…I don’t know about the others…but I’m doubting the DJ one.
Marijuana isn’t physically addictive (I’m pretty sure)…mentally, yes. If some comic book freak were to read 30 comics a day for months…and you were then to take away his comics…he’d go into a depression as well.
With regards to addiction a good example are the native tribes that live in Columbia and chew on the leaves of the plant that coccaine comes from. They need the coccaine to help them deal with the thinner mountain air. So every single day they do what is equally to a small amount of coccaine by chewing on the leaves. And when they move to a town and leave the mountains…if they stop chewing the leaves what happens? Nothing…the body goes through no withdrawl whatsoever.
Unlike alcohol where quitting it can be enough to kill some people. Isn’t one of the defining government characteristics of an “illegal” drug (or at least under the shelf)…something that is addictive?
[quote=“Mordeth”] Marijuana isn’t physically addictive (I’m pretty sure)…mentally, yes. If some comic book freak were to read 30 comics a day for months…and you were then to take away his comics…he’d go into a depression as well.
With regards to addiction a good example are the native tribes that live in Columbia and chew on the leaves of the plant that coccaine comes from. They need the coccaine to help them deal with the thinner mountain air. So every single day they do what is equally to a small amount of coccaine by chewing on the leaves. And when they move to a town and leave the mountains…if they stop chewing the leaves what happens? Nothing…the body goes through no withdrawl whatsoever.
Unlike alcohol where quitting it can be enough to kill some people. Isn’t one of the defining government characteristics of an “illegal” drug (or at least under the shelf)…something that is addictive?[/quote]
Hard to see your point here. Depression has a physiological component and marijuana seems to aggravate it for a lot of people.
“If” the people in the Andes go through no withdrawl after stopping coca leaves it is because the leaves do not have enough of the addictive ingredient to cause addiction, not something that could be said about the stuff people snort up their nose.
Alcohol, nicotine, opiates, THC are all delightful if you can manage them and hell if you can’t. The il/legality of it is not a factor biologically.
LSD is truly non-addictive and yet illegal, as perhaps it should be, as it seems to have quite a powerful psychoactive effect!
That’s too bad regarding all the examples folks have given of someone going off the deep end. I have no doubt that a combination of factors led to their demise. As someone(s) has already pointed out, if a person already has some problems, then is put under the stress and pressure of living abroad, AND starts using psychoactive drugs - that is a recipe for disaster. The example who turned out to have bipolar - that is a truly unfortunate diagnosis - and it usually turns up in young adults - the first time a manic or depressive phase hits (same with schizophrenia). It may have been the time for the disease to unmask itself, and then the stress and drug use hastened its onset, perhaps.
As far as marijuana, in the early 1990’s it was difficult to obtain. Much more accessible was hashish (the resin of the pot plant). I’m surprised to learn that “bud” is easy to come by now. The poster who pointed out that users would know if their weed was laced with something - I think that is right. And the folks who point out that users don’t know what type of fertilizer or pesticides might be tainting the product - that sounds right too. Whenever you use an illegal substance, you are taking a chance on the quality of the product. I mean, it’s not like you can report them to the better busines bureau, right?
I’m smoking some good shit right now and wishing I was in Taiwan. Does that make me crazy? I’m smoking it and I am depressed, but I wont be when it wears off, the biological facctor is minimal. The psyhchological one is temporary. The social one is the hardest to over come, what with moral cops prattling about every place.
The invisble hand does indeed work on the balck market in Taiwan as elsewhere. Mayhaps, it works there beter than at R.J. Reynolds or Starbucks or some other sanctioned entity. Price and quality are fairly well controlled by the hands workings. The insanity? My guess is its the reslut of some other chemical in balance. The frequency of madness observed… coincidence drawn from Mordeth’s depraved existence
Haha…sorry Mordeth, nothing really strange going on here except for your (our) proximity to tales of ordinary madness.
The truly frightening thing about all drugs is that they influence that part of yourself that is capable of deciding whether or not drugs are good for you, and this influence extends way beyond the time that you are actually doing them. Until you understand that you don’t understand drugs, alcohol, cocaine and heroin especially but IM not so HO marijuana can be bad that way too.
But hey, don’t listen to me, I’m just some guy that has seen the thing way too many times.
