Pictured Above: No shit.
Drugs. The word itself inspires A mix of imagery that is at the same time fun, dangerous, cool, evil, sad, and positive. I can feel the fast-rushing ambivalence in myself just thinking about it. I'd wager to guess that most people my age have the same lack of strong opinion about the entire issue of drugs.
When I say the entire issue, I mean the entire issue. Imagine I've just asked you how you feel about the "Issue of drugs". Your answers would come in all shapes, sizes and flavors, including but not limited to:
1- LEGALIZE THE LEAF BRO! It's like, just a plant! It would be like making iceberg lettuce illegal!
2- I think soft drugs are okay, but hard drugs are pure evil and should be illegal. Clearly, heroin and cocaine users deserve to be the victims of crime/dead/imprisoned because they didn't make the wise choice to be addicted to coffee and cigarettes like me.
3- Everyone in the U.S. Is over-medicated. What happened to like, eastern methods, ya know? Like watching "enter the dragon" on repeat until depression lifts?
4- Drugs are mad crucial. I'm on drugs right now. It's great, I feel all fuzzy inside and everything looks funny.
Not to belittle any opinion too much, these are all fine statements holding their own truth(does that sound post-modern? The doctors must have done a great job covering the lobotomy scars). However, opinions on "drugs" are all these things combined and then some.
Most people believe in medicine. That is, if someone is in physical pain it's certainly okay If they medicate to help manage it. What about emotional pain? Well, That too is seen as okay by most people. The line people draw in the sand is between using drugs to feel "normal" and using drugs to feel "damn good". But all drug use, among the sick and healthy, prescription, over-the-counter or illicit, is essentially the same thing: alteration of consciousness.
There are countless ways to alter consciousness, and not all of them are substances you can ingest. You can deprive yourself of sleep, sleep as much as possible, eat a whole lot, fast, meditate, watch stand-up comedy, listen to music really loud, do crossword puzzles, write, hyperventilate, hypoventilate, masturbate, fuck, use sensory deprivation, ride a rollercoaster, exercise moderately or excessively, self harm... the list goes on.
Which begs the question, what's the big deal when the way of altering your consciousness is a substance? Many substances you can use are more mild than these other methods. And even if they aren't, What's wrong with altering your consciousness, for recreation, and not just to cope?
Society holds onto the idea that the drug free, unafflicted individual is the ideal. If that's the case, everyone would be walking around acting like Penn Jillette and Henry Rollins. It's fine for some, but not for everyone. I suggest that if the majority population wasn't caffeinated, hungover and possibly dopesick during the day, and wasn't drunk, high, or possibly experimenting with psychedelics the rest of the time, the world would be a worse place to live in.
Pictured Above: A drug free world
It's well known and repeated that musicians, actors and other artists have an appetite for drug use and a predilection for drug abuse. What's less often said is there are tons of drugs users and abusers who are just regular people, and without the restrictions of the law; Joe-Six-Pack might be as common as Joe-bag-of-blow and Joe-eats-oxycontin-like-skittles. Since most drug users aren't trying to "just escape", but instead trying to improve their coping skills or find peace of mind, I think the effects would be a net positive.
It may sound a little too optimistic, but the status and popular opinion of all drugs is defined primarily by it's legal status, secondarily by myth, and finally by it's actual effects. When you look at the world of drugs as a whole, and I mean a real whole, prescription drugs and illegal ones all being equal, There are doubts about the legality and safety of each and every one. Each and every one.
The basic, uninformed argument is "There are certain illegal drugs that just don't do anyone any good". It's really not true. Many people have happy, positive experiences with hard drugs. If you don't believe it, read it from the horses mouth instead of watching "requiem for a dream" again. A demonized drug's addiction potential is partially physical, and partly because they're so damn good. However, if you think it's worthwhile to protect people from the possibility of addiction, nicotine, most anti-depressants, and caffeine should be outright illegal, right now.
My conclusion is that a relationship between a drug and it's user is such a subjective, personal thing with great variations. Some people are hopelessly addicted to cigarettes and suffer health consequences, and others try heroin and don't like it(really, read up) we can't make any absolute statements about any one drug. And if that's the case, They should all be legal. Each and every one of them.
That, or they should all be prescription. For recreational purposes as well as medical. But that would open a can of worms, dirt, and birds of prey we'd never get closed. Legalize drugs.
The feline community agrees.
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