I was hanging with a couple of friends the other day and the subject turned to the local pillhead population and their tendencies of ripping people off and thievery and all that. We'd all done our share of different things, but we all came out on the other side okay because we weren't a bunch of scandalous junkie thieves... we were stoners that liked to hang out and be goofy. We had our limitations on what we did to get high. If we didn't have the money, we had to do something else... might not have been as "fun," or whatever, but that's what we did... we weren't idiots and we weren't complete fucks. We had friends that sold all their furniture for dope, swindled all kinds of people out of all kinds of money for dope. The conversation made me recall a time when someone really close to me that had a pretty real problem told me that they didn't steal to get high... which... "stealing..." I guess technically, they didn't come right out and downright "steal" the cash... but they did constantly do things like using money given to them for "school stuff" and various other things ("concerts," etc.) for dope, get the credit card from the parents, go shopping for clothes, take the clothes back the next day, get the cash and buy dope... blah blah blah... but no, they weren't a "thief." lol

To this day, they probably don't feel much guilt for the stacks of cash they swindled out of their parents and whomever else to waste on a bunch of crap to try to deal with their problems (empty rationalizing is the key to an empty life)... which just led to not solving the problem, at all, and much more serious problems, later on.

Besides... "stuff" is cooler than "no stuff."