I had a client a 100% a disabled Army veteran served in Korea and Vietnam, in the Signal Corp and helicopter door gunner in Vietnam with burns over 30% of his body, in a wheelchair, but still lived by himself in a 2-room apartment (if you count the bathroom). His name was Arnold Derwin Goode born October 12, 1950. He came to me with this story. He went to Big Spring, Texas to the VA hospital to renew his medications, one of which was Hydrocodone for pain (to be taken 3 times per day). The VA pee tested him and he came back positive for pot and he said the Dr. told him “no more Hydrocodone for you until you quit pot” and said to “come back in 2 months if you’re clean I will renew your Hydrocodone prescription”.
Arnold said he told the doctor he’d been smokin’ pot 40 years. “It helps my depression, my anxiety helps me sleep, eat and helps my pain more than pills, but if I take both I can get by and now you want me to go cold turkey for 2 months? you can stick your pills’. “now I’ve got to get my pot and my pain pills on the street, and pot is getting so expensive around here, ‘cause nobody sells dirt weed anymore.” We wrote letters and filed complaints at the VA but he died October 28, 2018 before they ever responded. This song is for Corporal Arnold Goode and all others who have suffered the pain of war.

I’ve always tried to see the sunny side
Lost more than I’ve won, but I tried
Keep my chin up see a half full cup
But it’s hard when we still wage war

And cotton’s down to sixty cents a pound
Costs an arm and a leg for a pound of ground round
Takes three days pay to free your hound from the pound
And nobody sells dirt weed any more

I’m a charter member, of the Optimist Club
Think your only losing ground, when you stoop to slinging mud
Not a pessimist but I get depressed
When we send our best to war

Still don’t know what were fightin’ for
The jobs and the money have gone off shore
We turned our backs on the sick and poor
And nobody sells dirt weed any more

Son just sayin’ how I feel
Been downhill since Oldsmobile
Quit makin’ cars with U.S. Steel
And nobody sells dirt weed anymore

Aaah yowzah yowzah play it boys

Got a degree from Dale Carnegie
I Believe in God, guns and grass, And the right to have all three
Got rose-colored glasses but it chaps my asses
When we send our best to war

Then BP dumps in the Louisiana Gulf
Gets a slap on the wrist, writes it all off
Politicians slop at the pork barrel trough
And nobody sells dirt weed anymore

Hate to bitch, but here’s my beef
Twenty years of war without relief
I pay more taxes than the Commander in Chief
And nobody sells dirt weed anymore
Who’s with me