By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
Once upon a time, there was a hippie. He listened to all the big bands of the 1960s live; he was at Woodstock, he protested against the war, he tried all kinds of drugs and all kinds of sex. What next, he asked himself one sunny day – the very day that would bring him the news that Jim Morrison had died.
Our hero then decided to retire to the mountains of Colorado and spend the rest of his life in solitude and contemplation. He took with him two rucksacks of things, and among them were selected seeds of several types of weed that he loved tenderly and sincerely.
He lived in the wilderness for twenty years without meeting a human. He planted a garden. He made whiskey from his barley and rye. He smoked weed that he had grown himself.
Meanwhile, Jesus returned to this world a second time. A great war was fought and in it, as in all fairy tales, good won in the end. When God’s rule on Earth was consolidated, Jesus was told that a person was living in Colorado who did not know that the Apocalypse had happened. Yes, said Jesus and went to our hero.
Night fell on the mountain tops. The former hippie and current novice sat by the fireplace and recalled how he and his comrades, armed only with peace signs, bravely stormed the Pentagon on 21 October 1967, which did not end the war in Vietnam, but did start resistance to the war that would spread across the country like a prairie fire. Then someone knocked on his door.
The hippie opened it and saw his neighbour in front of him: a man who, bearded and hairy as he was, looked like him. The hippie was happy to see the stranger. He brought him into the house. Treat him with his best whiskey: by dawn, a bottle and a half. At some point, the hippie took out his weed, the one he had grown for years, so the two of them rolled up two joints and smoked in the peace of God.
With the first light, Jesus said: It is time for me to leave you, although God will never leave you. But before I go, I want you to know: I am Jesus Christ. I came to this world for the second time. As the holy book promised, I brought the Apocalypse and a thousand years of peace.
The hippies looked at the joint that was burning between his fingers and, satisfied as a man who has just achieved the greatest victory of his life, said: I knew it was good.
The combination of religion and drugs, according to official data, is very widespread in Montenegro. Statistics say that every one in two drivers tested by the police for drugs is positive. The statistics also say that the people here, including the drivers, of course, love their church and have great trust in it. The official state truth says that in 2020, the people returned to religion, stood by their Church, overthrew the godless government, established democracy and rebuilt Montenegro on traditional, Orthodox values.
But why are there so many drug addicts among believers? Where do so many drugs come from in a society that is decisively shaped by the church? What’s stuck? Religion is a drug, every Marxist knows. But that’s obviously not enough for the people. The guy who was stopped by the police the other day, and it turned out that he was on six drugs, is a metaphor for the local guy. I understand that peoooople won freedom and got rid of the evil DPS. But, fuck it, there was drug during the DPS regime, too – but peoooople are snorting as if they ran away from hunger. Since they were released, people have been taking everything from cocaine to Xanax. Here we have every country host like Kurt Cobain on MTV unplugged: teeth grinding because he is on speedball. The way things are going, soon we’ll be paying the tractor drivers who chop wood for us with methamphetamine.
What can we do? Perhaps we should try the recipe of San Francisco and other liberal strongholds, for example. There, addicts are given milder drugs, free and legal. We could, for starters, legalise drink driving. Because the man who gets behind the wheel after half a bottle of brandy is nothing compared to the citizens of liberated Montenegro, whose bloodstream contains more drugs than the warehouse of the average Colombian drug cartel.
Perhaps, in order to reduce the number of drugged drivers, a free beer dispensing station should be installed at every gas station, which is baby food compared to what the average driver’s body carries.
That slogan about the new Montenegro, which we will have to get used to, does not even remotely convey the bizarreness of the local society. We are not used to it. But they got hooked.
(Columnists’ opinions and views are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)
