Drugs. Most of us have grown up knowing that they're bad, right? This generation of kids has had more drug education than any other, yet the usage of drugs is still incredibly high (little pun there...). I ask you, how did this happen?
Sometimes, it seems to be common sense to assume the drug users are stupid. It's a simple, to-the-point explanation that works well to brush the topic off and not think about it anymore. Stupidity, however, does not seem to be a valid excuse. Not all drug users have a low IQ. Although, if they keep it up, they'll certainly ensure it.
Let's think. There's so many choices out there from crack to marijuana to LSD to speed. They can be smoked, inhaled, injected, and eated for maximum effect. We've had the health classes. We've had the lectures. Most parents try to head off any future problems by making sure their children know drugs are harmful to their health.
We also know that drugs can kill. Some, like coccaine, can kill on the first use.
Given this evidence, it still baffles me that so many people do drugs. I even had a guy who walked into my dorm room to tell my roommates he'd taken " 'shrooms" before a concert. "They heightened my experience," he stated. One of the roomies said, "Why would you take drugs?" and he replied "Mushrooms aren't drugs."
Anything that alters your perceptions and health can be a drug. Heck, CAFFEINE is a drug!
I invite anyone to answer my simple question: Why do people still use drugs? This is a conundrum for sure.
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My simple answer is that they do it b/c they like the way it feels. Some people drink cuz they like being drunk...perfectly legal. Others snort crack for the same reason...except it is illegal.
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The world is chaotic, so people think, why not? What's more chaos on top of chaos? Then life becomes more chaotic due to residual effects (the ones that continue after the desired ones have long worn off) and the drugs which created the chaos become perceived as a reliable familiar effect sort of a reprieve from the chaos.
Simply; drugs become a sort of reliable familiar sensation as opposed to the chaos of sensations that is life without drugs, particularly when a person quits drugs.
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I think that why people use drugs is to get rid of pain and to stop being ill from the flu, colds, allergies, etc.
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Thanks for the comments everyone!
Yes, it does seem that drug users try to escape stress and responsibilities with drug use. Alcoholics do the same thing.
What we need is to prove to these types of people that this is not the way to solve problems. Stress and problems do not disappear, they just wait for you to be sober/clean again to harrass you again.
Drugs are fun. They make you feel good, or different, or better, or relaxed, or pretty much any way you want to feel. You take drugs to make you more sociable, to let you dance all night or to talk all night. You take drugs that reduce the pain of problems in your life and take drugs that will help you identify or work through problems in your life. Not all drugs are taken for the same reason. One might take E to enhance a sexual experience, but heroin or mushrooms probably wouldn't work as well. Drugs aren't all the same and neither are drug users. If you don't do drugs, and would never do them, then you will never really understand why people do them.
Different people take different drugs for different reasons. IF you had to sift it down into one simple explanation it would be that drugs alter our perceptions in a subjectively positive way. That's incredibly broad, but almost certainly true true. If people didn't want to be altered they wouldn't take drugs.
It's a conundrum for me as to why people don't use drugs. The answers are just as varied as for drug users. Fear of losing control, bad experience (personal or otherwise), they don't like the way drugs make them feel, perceived risk vs. gain, legality, medical issues, addiction issues, availability, expense, or even that they have just gotten bored of doing drugs. To approach drug users only within their own context is foolish. Non-drug-users need to be examined as well, not just used as some kind of de facto control population.
All of human history is peppered, drenched really in chemical alteration as a positive and a negative. Drugs range from the ultimate of forbidden evils to staples of everyday life to connections with the world of the divine. Trying to pin down drug use to a single, broad behavior pattern is pointless. Any useful statement is so broad as to be nearly meaningless. At best one could classify drug users into a wide range of narrower patterns of use and abuse. Even a single drug will be used for various purposes by various people. "Half Baked" identifies a variety of pot smokers.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memento mori, mahalo.
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Drug use doesn't lower IQ. There's no guarantee of a person becoming more or less intelligent due to drugs. It's important to separate this from the issue.
Your definition of 'drug' should tell you why people use them: "Anything that alters your perceptions and health can be a drug"... vitamin C alters my health, namely it helps my immune system, thus I take it. Food contains drugs (chemicals which alter health/perceptions). Some 'drugs' help promote healthy hearts and eyes... so they definitely alter perceptions. It's hard to perceive anything when your heart stops beating... and it's hard to perceive visually with poor eyesight.
I'm being a little facetious, but the point should be clear enough.
Some drugs can kill brain cells though. Getting high in certain ways really does fry the brain.
Your point was clear and when I wrote this blog last year I probably should've been more careful with wording. I was trying to be more specific and talk about the hard drugs like coccaine, heroin, speed, etc.
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Definitely. Some things don't so much get you 'high' as make you feel funny because of the sledgehammer they take to your brain. There's probably not much merit to that. Especially these bizarre ones made by community college chemistry dropouts in the bathtubs of their trailers from a slurry of over the counter medicines and tractor oil.
Mmmm. Tractor oil. Sounds tasty...
A big no-no is paint sniffers. That definitely kills brain cells. You just see what sniffing glue or paint does to somebody...it's just scary.
A dangerous drug could be anything. Heck, we could make the category even broader by looking at dangerous chemicals that people ingest and/or smoke. Bleach, lead paint, ammonia...all these things are incredibly dangerous to your health, and they are even more acceptable (and certainly more legal) than something like crack.
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Well, let's just do anyone a favor and ban everything that could ever possibly be used for a harmful purpose. Let's start with water. It's the leading cause of drowning in the US.
And air. All that pollution and such.
And how about coffee? One week it's good, the next week it's bad...I say it's evil because it just can't make up it's mind!
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Huffing is the lowest, most disgusting form of drug use. If you are caught huffing you should be given free weed so that you can get a real high instead of just choking yourself with chemicals. Huffing is for stupid, fucked up 12 year olds.
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AND it's very dangerous to your health.
All you have to do is watch a few episodes of Cops to see some of these huffers (is that a real term?). I mean it's scary. These guys get to be skeletal thin and become complete idiots because most of their brain is gone by this point.
Although I don't think highly of marijuana, it doesn't appear to screw people up like the hard drugs and inhalants do.
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