Did "The Pusher" song by Hoyt Axton save lives?

It saved mine. I have lived through some interesting times having grown up around the 1960s and even 70s drug culture. I've often ascribed my survival to the Steppenwolf song "The Pusher", since it came out. Since I first heard it. Though obviously it also had to be considered with a certain level of intelligence, my own DNA and simply how I was raised.

I got to see a solo John Kay of Steppenwolf on stage in Seattle in the early 80s, which was pretty awesome.

I always avoided anything I thought I wouldn't be able to kick. So I've never done heroin. Opium in the late 70s and I really liked it. A lot. But it was only more the proof to the belief. The 80s were potential for a mistake in the flood of cocaine back then. But somehow I got through it all with my life, my dignity and my friends.

Yet that single line, "...I never touched nothin' that my spirit could kill", resonated in my mind all through the 1970s and 80s. After that things toned down a lot for me.

The Pusher (Steppenwolf, 1968) first stanza:

"You know I've smoked a lot of grass
O' Lord, I've popped a lot of pills
But I never touched nothin'
That my spirit could kill"

"He’s smoked his fair share of weed and messed around with some uppers/downers, which was extremely commonplace at the time. However, he made sure not to cross the line into hard drug territory with spirit killing drugs like heroin."

"The Pusher" is a rock song written by Hoyt Axton, made popular by the 1969 movie Easy Rider which used Steppenwolf's version to accompany the opening scenes showing drug trafficking.

Songwriter Hoyt Axton did not record "The Pusher" himself until he included it on his 1971 album, Joy to the World.[citation needed]

The lyrics of the song distinguish between a dealer in drugs such as marijuana—who "will sell you lots of sweet dreams"—and a pusher of hard drugs such as heroin—a "monster" who doesn't care "if you live or if you die".

Whatever it is that we latch onto that keeps us alive through our formative and into our adult years in helping us to be smarter than stupid, is certainly worth finding and having. What's yours?

Political Addiction

Note: I am trying to ween myself off of political commentary. It is like being a junkie and walking through the mall when every other person you walk by runs up to you and shoots smack into your eyes; it's hard to avoid and impossible not to react to. Sometimes, viscerally.

But listening in these modern times with all the instant communications, biased news, political pundits, idiots, tramps and thieves (the latter three I'll take most of the time over that immediate former), it makes it hard not to be occasionally incensed and constantly stimulated to speak out, clearly, and at an 8th grade level so as not to be misunderstood.

I know, double negative, deal with it.

But now that I am trying, I am in withdrawal and I will do my best to contain my insanity and addiction and return to the somewhat hidden and closeted arena of a writer's speculative and the fiction worlds.

The obvious trouble with that as I'm sure you well know, is that in our modern world too many people simply cannot tell the difference between what is fiction and what is non-fiction. And so they attempt to apply unreal, opinionated information, sadly and too often successfully, to serious concerns in what I like to call the, "Real World".

Now this is not the "Real World" on MTV, so perhaps I should say, the "Actual" world. Which as you know (or should), is that which is observable when you look and listen to real people going through real events in real time.

I know. Just swap out "real" for "actual", but it should be the same thing.
It just isn't any longer.

Think about that for a minute.