Long haired hippy freaks

So about a year and a half ago I decided to grow my hair long. The reason I did was because when it hits eight inches I am donating it to a charity that I like. It has been growing quickly and I now have long flowing locks like in the old hippy days.

It has been interesting to note how people started to treat me differently as my hair started to get longer and longer. Doctors treat me totally different now as a long hair. Most but not all of them immediately assume I am a drug addict just because my hair is longer and then they treat me with outright contempt often times. That never happened when I had short hair. Suddenly the drugs I need for my chronic pain were getting harder and harder to obtain. I have not changed anything else except the length of my hair. I still behave in exactly the same way as I did before and the doctors treated me with respect then but with disdain now. Why is this? My politics are the same. My speech has not changed. I am still polite and soft spoken. I will admit that once the doctors start treating me with disdain I respond and start pushing their buttons right back which is something I never had to do before.

At Stanford Hospital Emergency room I ran into a particularly rude doctor. He first started to tell me I should not be coming to a classy hospital like Stanford but I should be going to one of those specialty clinics over in Oakland. When I asked him what he was talking about he just repeatedly said the same things over and over again about how there were no doctors at Stanford that were trained to treat people like me but that there were forty or fifty clinics over in Oakland that were specially trained to treat people like me. He was referring to methadone clinics and other drug abuse clinics but he would not say it directly. I pushed him on it to give a name of a clinic and asked him how could there possibly not be any doctors at Stanford Hospital that treat chronic pain. I asked what he meant by "people like you." But he refused to elaborate on his meaning. He intentionally tried to provoke me so that he could call security and have me thrown out but I did not bite on his baiting provocations. I knew for a fact that there was a specialty clinic for pain in the Stanford system but he denied that there was. He ranted and raved at me that only the clinics in Oakland were trained to treat people like me. Then he discharged me with a contemptuous attitude and told me to never return. I should have pressed charges against him but I chose not to. I did file a complaint with the administration over his behavior. They took my complaint seriously.

I only bring this up because earlier this month I had my prescription meds stolen out of my backpack while I was traveling and I had to replace them. That meant going to a new doctor and asking for morphine which I understand can look like a drug addict's behavior. I got my prescriptions but I was treated very rudely by the doctor. So when traveling carry meds in a safe way and don't keep them all in the same place because sometimes it takes a long time to replace them when you are on the road.

Why do humans have such a strong need or even compulsion to have to place everybody they come into contact with into some sort of pigeon hole based on some random criteria like the length of hair or the color of skin or their dress etc? Please take the time to treat people respectfully when you meet them whether you are traveling or just around your daily life. Don't assume things about the character and intentions of others until you have enough facts to actually make an informed decision. Enjoy life.