I was really enjoying the show while it was on Fox Kids, but like a precurser to modern day Cartoon Network they kept shuffing it around all over the schedual until it just vanished and never came back.
Yeah, “Flushing your (or at least your less privileged roommate who had nothing to do with your misfortune) University prospects down the toilet won’t bring your mother back to life, but it MIGHT make it harder for her to rest in peace” may have been a better way to express the point.
Yeah, I’m seeing the RA calling the police or something and Sarah being in the position of saying who the weed belongs to or both of them spending the night in jail and missing exams, something along those those lines where she’s between a rock and a hard place.
I doubt the police will be involved because they aren’t called very often IRL for just “teenagers smokin’ weed” on a college campus. I’m sure it’ll either just be an RA *threatening* to call them, or campus security catches a whiff.
Either that or this won’t escalate at all, and is in fact, already at the climax. Someone will notice this once.
Could be, still it would be hard not to feel sorry for Danah if that’s what happened. She’s been really nice so far, going out of her way to include Sarah in circle of friends, and assuming they’re telling the truth even using fairly kind words to describe her to them.
Frequent substance use is actually okay if you set rules and follow them (and obviously, you remain relatively productive IRL). It’s when you break your own rules and make exceptions that things go to shit, because then it’s that much easier to break them whenever you want in the future, and then it transforms from something you have control over into something you do whenever you feel like it.
That reminds me of a my roomate last year, he did this to a tee.
He would smoke weed, get drunk, take like codine (I think), and cough syrup, and shrooms on a regular but he stayed very productive and had guidlines, and would turned down opportunities to get high whenever they contradicted with one of his rules.
Yeah, there are plenty of functional alcoholics/ junkies who manage to keep a normal life going. It often spirals out of control eventually, or impacts their relationships, but it is not uncommon for them to keep a decent day-to-day existence going.
That sums it up. I could go into gruesome detail regarding someone I personally knew who went from “functioning pot-head” to homeless waste but I think today’s strip maxed out the depression quota already.
Just wondering, are you saying that from a ‘it’s your fault for trying it in the first place’ perspective, or a ‘it’s your fault for letting it become a problem?’
There are so many messy elements going into addiction, one being that humans are more similar to Pavlov’s dog than we like to admit.
The difference between use and abuse doesn’t have a lot to do with frequency. Dana’s leapt over that line now to the point where her substance abuse is covering up issues arising from her mother’s death – preventing her from dealing with those problems. It becomes a feedback loop, basically, because the problems won’t stay the same – if they don’t get better, they’re going to get worse. As they get worse, so will her substance abuse unless someone DOES something about it. Which I’m guessing Sarah tries to and then it doesn’t go well for her.
:/ I guess I should have expected a college themed comic to come to this topic of drug use. But damn if it isn’t still annoying. v.v Damn my addiction to Willis comics.
This, right here, explains why there are no abductees in this universe.
Would you want to invade a planet where the mellowest members of society are using your advance force’s skulls as bongs?
I feel sorry for both of them. I lost my mother and It hurts. There is no way to get around it or over it or under it. You just get through it. Drugs /booze don’t help-it just puts facing it/feeling it off.
I feel sorry for Sarah, she wants to help her, but no way anyone can. You just say you’re sorry and try to be around if needed.
I’m not sure you can have both no abductees and Nachitos. Just a suspicion, mind, but I think you either don’t use the Aliens’ skulls as bongs, or you don’t get Nachitos. Something about universal balance.
You are probably correct. This is one of those storylines that really hits home, because I’ve seen one or two lives ruined by allegedly innocuous drugs.
Before the pot defense squad comes at me, I’m not saying pot is bad every time all the time, but there are definitely people for whom it is Bad News Bears, and seeing it here is a painful reminder of that.
“Before the pot defense squad comes at me, I’m not saying pot is bad every time all the time, but there are definitely people for whom it is Bad News Bears, and seeing it here is a painful reminder of that.
Pot is innocuous, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a catalyst for self-destructive behavior. It isn’t “addictive” like the hard drugs, but it is “addictive” in the same way as gambling, or MMOs, or sex. It’s not a chemical addiction, and it won’t kill you the way dangerous drugs will, but if it’s the only thing someone does or pays attention to, that isn’t a healthy lifestyle.
At that point everything, including food, is a chemical addiction.
I think the context of chemical addiction here is that theres a particular chemical in the substance that travel through the bloodstream into the brain and invokes the release of hormones or nuero transmitters or whatever rather than taking advantage of an indirect path to one’s reward center like Gaming, Food and Sex.
That’s not quite what chemically addictive means. To be chemically addictive, it has to fundamentally alter the chemistry of the brain. Sex releases feel good chemicals that compel certain people to want it as much as possible, but it’s not an addiction at that point, it’s a compulsion.
I’d guess home made. Pot smokers are awesomely creative when it comes to bongs. One of my friends was very proud of his Darth Bong (Made from one of the Darth Maul cup toppers that came out around the time of the original Episode 1 release) and most companies that own a mainstream intellectual property shy away from releasing official drug paraphenalia merch.
This is shaping a lot like I was expecting. There were people who predicted that Dana was going to OD on something, and Sara was going to oust her drug habits to save her life, but I didn’t buy it.
This has Dana engaging in behavior that’s going to get her in trouble, and more to the point, get Sara in trouble too. Dana might have a reason for it, but it puts Sara in the position of betraying her friend or getting kicked out of school because of someone else’s stupid behavior.
I say she goes to dana’s friends and they just scoff it off and so she does go to a counseler to try to get dana to help her deal with her mom’s death but the counseler reports dana instead and it spirals from there to where dana overdoes because she can’t deal with life and her mom’s death.
I just don’t understand why is Joyce so ok with the whole smoking weed thing. I mean. It’s Joyce. Shouldn’t she be like “howaaah she smoked weed~~?!!”? Or does my straighetdgefagging goes beyond Joyce’s pureness and even Joyce doesn’t find smoking weed to be that bad and sinful?
I notice that she called it “weed” rather than “marijuana” back when the issue first came up. It’s not something like atheism, where it had never entered her little world before she went to college.
It wouldn’t surprise me if her little homeschool circles had kids who toked. Likely parents, too. These are people who don’t trust the gub’ment to teach their kids, why should they listen to it about what intoxicants are and aren’t okay?
I grew up in the Bible belt and knew several home-schooled kids through my church and through other activities. These people’s parents were NOT the kind of people to smoke because The Man disapproves of it.
The social conservative/liberal divide on anti/pro-legalization is pretty well-defined. Not all “anti-government” views line up together.
Maybe she’s (a) polite enough not to interrupt the story and (b) already familiar with the fact that Sarah’s last roommate had a drug abuse problem since it’s one of the first things Sarah told her when they met.
She probably saw that pot episode of “Diff’rent Strokes” where the dad caught Willis getting high in his bedroom. You know. If I were to hazard a guess. *Grin*
I’m really liking how this thing between Raidah and Sarah is being handled. I like how realistic it is, instead of Sarah vs stupid assholes. I dunno, even if I hate some characters in this strip on princible, they tend to be pretty well developed antagonists and I like that.
The more I see of this, the more I’m convinced Raidah has it in for Sarah because Sarah reminds her too much of what she secretly can’t stand about herself. Both ladies seem to be shifting the source of the chips on their shoulders away from it’s source…and tend to crawfish when straight-shamed by the other one…
. . . I like this story line. But he makes out weed to be some horrible, horrible drug that can destroy lives. I don’t buy it.
If Dana were as distraught as she was weed wouldn’t do much to help, it can’t be physically addicting, and I have a feeling she would have turned to alcohol or pharming to cope with emotional distress.
Huh… Dana isn’t very good at smoking with a bong, is she? You shouldn’t put that part of the lighter near the bowl, otherwise you end up inhaling a lot more butane than you needed to, which isn’t very good for you.
Loading ...
Where is Dexter?
Dana’s using a Dexter (Head Alien) themed paraphernalia.
Heh. Head Alien. Excellent pun, Willis.
She’s getting head.
*cue rimshot*
*cue rimjob*
*cue cumshot*
*cue gunshot*
*cue woodchipper*
*cue whiskey shot*
*cue deathstar*
Cue c-c-combo breaker
I missed that. Thank you.
I was actually going “Wait, is that Head Alien?” before reading the tags. Yaaay, tags!
I was wondering who would be the first to notice the tag. Clearly, I underestimated.
Well.
This is awkward.
This can only get worse.
I NEED that bong. For…. science.
You mean ‘applied chemistry’ right?
Pharmacology.
That’s an interesting gravatar, PM: who is she?
She is Cyber-6, a superheroine who poses as a mild mannered MALE school teacher during the day.
Where does she put her boobs?
No seriously banding can only do so much..
It is never explained but often questioned.
I hold them for her, it’s a win win arrangement. I won’t get into the specifics though as they technically warp the fabric of reality.
Mike holds them for a nickel a minute.
Thanks. I’m going to look her up now.
I was really enjoying the show while it was on Fox Kids, but like a precurser to modern day Cartoon Network they kept shuffing it around all over the schedual until it just vanished and never came back.
Yeah, I hate it when they do that with my favorite shows!
She’s dead get over it.
Pot evidently helps with that process.
It helps about as much as alcohol does.
Which is to say not at all. Just puts off dealing with it.
it actually helps way the shit more
Mkvenner’s compassion and understanding knows NO BOUNDS!!!
Mkvenner or … *rips off his mask* Mike Warner!
Yeah, “Flushing your (or at least your less privileged roommate who had nothing to do with your misfortune) University prospects down the toilet won’t bring your mother back to life, but it MIGHT make it harder for her to rest in peace” may have been a better way to express the point.
I’m a bit confused. Isn’t Mkvenner a character in Gaunt’s Ghosts?
Ah, that Mkvenner. I think I was blind for a moment.
That would be about as good of a way to express that thoughtless and viciously unsympathetic point.
I have to ask…where’s Penfold?
As opposed to what?
I think we need to switch Gravatars…
No, he needs to switch with someone who has Mike.
The joke is wasted on DoA-exclusive readers.
I want my Dina one back.
I hate Gallaso (Galasso?).
Go to http://www.gravatar.com and setup your own. You can use any pic, just ask Plasma Mongoose 😛
You would think I was some kind of expert on the subject the way you said that. 😀
Well.. now I’m sad
Well I think we can all see where this is going.
Sarah gives in and turns to drugs!
Sarah gives in and turns into drugs.
You are what you eat. Or in this case, inject, inhale, sniff, huff, puff, blow… and so on.
Are you calling Sarah a dope? 😛
No, I’m saying she blows.
Somewhere, Joe’s ears (and pants) just perked up.
I’m sure Joe would love some of that crack!
…No?
Ha
When my Dad died I kinda said the same thing.. Without the getting stoned part..
…Oy. Spoiler alert: this won’t end well. At all. Nope.
…Dammit! I HATE spoilers! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
I’m with ya. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
At all? Maybe a little…?
Let the awkwardness begin!
Damnit, my gravitar keeps changing.
I know the feeling. 😀
Yeah but yours is self inflicted.
Damn you Willis, that’s really sad.
The scientific term for this situation is, I believe, “spiralling.”
It’s also the word of the day.
AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHHHHHH!!!
Yeah, I’m seeing the RA calling the police or something and Sarah being in the position of saying who the weed belongs to or both of them spending the night in jail and missing exams, something along those those lines where she’s between a rock and a hard place.
a crack rock and a hard place o3o
I doubt the police will be involved because they aren’t called very often IRL for just “teenagers smokin’ weed” on a college campus. I’m sure it’ll either just be an RA *threatening* to call them, or campus security catches a whiff.
Either that or this won’t escalate at all, and is in fact, already at the climax. Someone will notice this once.
Could be, still it would be hard not to feel sorry for Danah if that’s what happened. She’s been really nice so far, going out of her way to include Sarah in circle of friends, and assuming they’re telling the truth even using fairly kind words to describe her to them.
I am guessing she won’t only want to have that that once only ):
Right in the heart, man. Right in the heart.
*sitcom laugh track*
Jeez what is this a Disney show? Put that wildly inappropriate laugh track away!
Humm….if this was a Disney show…say Kim Possible…who would be who?
Well Sal would have to be Kim. Simply sue to the nature of their shared acrobatic skills.
Frequent substance use is actually okay if you set rules and follow them (and obviously, you remain relatively productive IRL). It’s when you break your own rules and make exceptions that things go to shit, because then it’s that much easier to break them whenever you want in the future, and then it transforms from something you have control over into something you do whenever you feel like it.
That reminds me of a my roomate last year, he did this to a tee.
He would smoke weed, get drunk, take like codine (I think), and cough syrup, and shrooms on a regular but he stayed very productive and had guidlines, and would turned down opportunities to get high whenever they contradicted with one of his rules.
And it worked out for him?
Walking the tightrope.
Yeah, there are plenty of functional alcoholics/ junkies who manage to keep a normal life going. It often spirals out of control eventually, or impacts their relationships, but it is not uncommon for them to keep a decent day-to-day existence going.
That sums it up. I could go into gruesome detail regarding someone I personally knew who went from “functioning pot-head” to homeless waste but I think today’s strip maxed out the depression quota already.
It really isn’t the drugs fault, most of the time. If you LET them control your life, sure. But you had to get there in the first place.
Just wondering, are you saying that from a ‘it’s your fault for trying it in the first place’ perspective, or a ‘it’s your fault for letting it become a problem?’
There are so many messy elements going into addiction, one being that humans are more similar to Pavlov’s dog than we like to admit.
The difference between use and abuse doesn’t have a lot to do with frequency. Dana’s leapt over that line now to the point where her substance abuse is covering up issues arising from her mother’s death – preventing her from dealing with those problems. It becomes a feedback loop, basically, because the problems won’t stay the same – if they don’t get better, they’re going to get worse. As they get worse, so will her substance abuse unless someone DOES something about it. Which I’m guessing Sarah tries to and then it doesn’t go well for her.
:/ I guess I should have expected a college themed comic to come to this topic of drug use. But damn if it isn’t still annoying. v.v Damn my addiction to Willis comics.
You realize that the topic came up in like, the ninth strip? Right? one month shy of two years ago today?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/high/
Yes, I’m aware. >| I can read.
But now there is a storyline focusing on it more heavily and depicting it. I find it rather frustrating.
This, right here, explains why there are no abductees in this universe.
Would you want to invade a planet where the mellowest members of society are using your advance force’s skulls as bongs?
This… makes sense.
And where they have frequently airing propaganda (cartoon show) training its denizens to be vigilant in the scenario of a covert alien invasion.
I feel sorry for both of them. I lost my mother and It hurts. There is no way to get around it or over it or under it. You just get through it. Drugs /booze don’t help-it just puts facing it/feeling it off.
I feel sorry for Sarah, she wants to help her, but no way anyone can. You just say you’re sorry and try to be around if needed.
There is no way this won’t end in fire.
Well SOMETHING’S getting burned right now OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH–
The second thing on the list is weed.
And whatever the third thing is on the list, it will soon be replaced by Nachitos.
I’m not sure you can have both no abductees and Nachitos. Just a suspicion, mind, but I think you either don’t use the Aliens’ skulls as bongs, or you don’t get Nachitos. Something about universal balance.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/pmhp/
Boom. Archived.
PRE-MARITAL HANKY-PANKY
Drat you, Willis.
Not to be a giant shithead, but that kind of talk is exactly what leads to problems in very short order…
Oh, hey, check it out; my gravatar changed!
And doubtless that’s exactly why things are going to go to hell in about the very next strip, if I’m any judge.
You are probably correct. This is one of those storylines that really hits home, because I’ve seen one or two lives ruined by allegedly innocuous drugs.
Before the pot defense squad comes at me, I’m not saying pot is bad every time all the time, but there are definitely people for whom it is Bad News Bears, and seeing it here is a painful reminder of that.
Once in a while, DoA hits me right in the feels.
“Before the pot defense squad comes at me, I’m not saying pot is bad every time all the time, but there are definitely people for whom it is Bad News Bears, and seeing it here is a painful reminder of that.
Once in a while, DoA hits me right in the feels.”
Agreed Blob, agreed.
IN THE FEELS
Word.
Pot is innocuous, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a catalyst for self-destructive behavior. It isn’t “addictive” like the hard drugs, but it is “addictive” in the same way as gambling, or MMOs, or sex. It’s not a chemical addiction, and it won’t kill you the way dangerous drugs will, but if it’s the only thing someone does or pays attention to, that isn’t a healthy lifestyle.
Technically, sex would be considered a chemical addiction.
Since when? ‘Pleasurable’ =/= ‘chemically addictive’, last I checked.
It’s the feel-good chemicals your body releases during sex. It can be addictive.
At that point everything, including food, is a chemical addiction.
I think the context of chemical addiction here is that theres a particular chemical in the substance that travel through the bloodstream into the brain and invokes the release of hormones or nuero transmitters or whatever rather than taking advantage of an indirect path to one’s reward center like Gaming, Food and Sex.
That’s not quite what chemically addictive means. To be chemically addictive, it has to fundamentally alter the chemistry of the brain. Sex releases feel good chemicals that compel certain people to want it as much as possible, but it’s not an addiction at that point, it’s a compulsion.
“Pot defense squad”
That term, I love it.
And also, it is illegal in the U.S. pretty sure that’s enough reason not to do it in the U.S.
Not really. That’s just reason not to get caught.
It’s enough reason for me not to do it, but not enough reason for me to protest other people’s use on general principle.
Well this can’t go anywhere but to shit.
Wait… So we ain’t going to funky town? Awww…
We can go to funkytown if you want. (Not to be creepy.)
Won’t you take me?
No.
A Head Alien bong…..wow….
So, is that a home-made job, or did it come from the store like that?
I’d guess home made. Pot smokers are awesomely creative when it comes to bongs. One of my friends was very proud of his Darth Bong (Made from one of the Darth Maul cup toppers that came out around the time of the original Episode 1 release) and most companies that own a mainstream intellectual property shy away from releasing official drug paraphenalia merch.
Fire alarms! So many fire alarms!
Prediction:
Sarah goes to a campus authority to help Dana, who just remove her instead.
This is shaping a lot like I was expecting. There were people who predicted that Dana was going to OD on something, and Sara was going to oust her drug habits to save her life, but I didn’t buy it.
This has Dana engaging in behavior that’s going to get her in trouble, and more to the point, get Sara in trouble too. Dana might have a reason for it, but it puts Sara in the position of betraying her friend or getting kicked out of school because of someone else’s stupid behavior.
Rough all around, and entirely believable.
So much gray area. I feel like I’m drowning in it.
(Great writing, Willis!)
That’s the coolest bong I’ve ever seen…
Now the questions are: Was her mom cremated? And if so… Is she smoking her mom?
If so what did she blend mom with? I would go with Maui Wowie, if you’re gonna smoke a loved one do it with style.
I say she goes to dana’s friends and they just scoff it off and so she does go to a counseler to try to get dana to help her deal with her mom’s death but the counseler reports dana instead and it spirals from there to where dana overdoes because she can’t deal with life and her mom’s death.
I just don’t understand why is Joyce so ok with the whole smoking weed thing. I mean. It’s Joyce. Shouldn’t she be like “howaaah she smoked weed~~?!!”? Or does my straighetdgefagging goes beyond Joyce’s pureness and even Joyce doesn’t find smoking weed to be that bad and sinful?
I notice that she called it “weed” rather than “marijuana” back when the issue first came up. It’s not something like atheism, where it had never entered her little world before she went to college.
It wouldn’t surprise me if her little homeschool circles had kids who toked. Likely parents, too. These are people who don’t trust the gub’ment to teach their kids, why should they listen to it about what intoxicants are and aren’t okay?
You don’t know many religious conservatives personally, do you?
Recreational drug use is not generally approved of.
That’s a pretty broad brush to paint with. “Religious conservatives cover a lot of ground.
And I can attest to the fact that some of them smoke weed.
I grew up in the Bible belt and knew several home-schooled kids through my church and through other activities. These people’s parents were NOT the kind of people to smoke because The Man disapproves of it.
The social conservative/liberal divide on anti/pro-legalization is pretty well-defined. Not all “anti-government” views line up together.
Also:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/hitimes/
Maybe she’s (a) polite enough not to interrupt the story and (b) already familiar with the fact that Sarah’s last roommate had a drug abuse problem since it’s one of the first things Sarah told her when they met.
She probably saw that pot episode of “Diff’rent Strokes” where the dad caught Willis getting high in his bedroom. You know. If I were to hazard a guess. *Grin*
I’m not sure where Joyce indicated she was okay with it.
She doesn’t react with the shock or horror most people would expect.
Mike wanted her mom, too.
And got her for a nickle.
Pre-mortem, I’m hoping.
Mike knows your hopes and dreams.
That’s why he waited.
And buried the nickel with her.
I’m really liking how this thing between Raidah and Sarah is being handled. I like how realistic it is, instead of Sarah vs stupid assholes. I dunno, even if I hate some characters in this strip on princible, they tend to be pretty well developed antagonists and I like that.
The more I see of this, the more I’m convinced Raidah has it in for Sarah because Sarah reminds her too much of what she secretly can’t stand about herself. Both ladies seem to be shifting the source of the chips on their shoulders away from it’s source…and tend to crawfish when straight-shamed by the other one…
. . . I like this story line. But he makes out weed to be some horrible, horrible drug that can destroy lives. I don’t buy it.
If Dana were as distraught as she was weed wouldn’t do much to help, it can’t be physically addicting, and I have a feeling she would have turned to alcohol or pharming to cope with emotional distress.
Huh… Dana isn’t very good at smoking with a bong, is she? You shouldn’t put that part of the lighter near the bowl, otherwise you end up inhaling a lot more butane than you needed to, which isn’t very good for you.