Why Dirty Old Uncle Roger Opposes Drug Use and Shut Up.

[LMNO]

To modify:

What if I take drugs regularly, yet I don't alter my regular daily life, and I do not feel "dependency" regarding the drug use?

Not being a jerk, I was curious if there's a term for that.

[AFK]

To modify:

What if I take drugs regularly, yet I don't alter my regular daily life, and I do not feel "dependency" regarding the drug use?

Not being a jerk, I was curious if there's a term for that.

That is basically the second stage of drug abuse/use.  Regular use where the person is able to quit without any impacts on their daily lives or health.  if it starts to result in risky behaviors and it does become an integral part of the daily life then it moves into Stage 3 and dependency.

[LMNO]

So it wouldn't be dependency.... yet.



:ominous thunder in the distance:

[AFK]

it is very fluid, and people can move up and down stages, though once you get into stages 3 and 4 it becomes much more difficult to move down without professional help.

[Junkenstein]

it is very fluid, and people can move up and down stages, though once you get into stages 3 and 4 it becomes much more difficult to move down without professional help.

And of course, Prison is the best place to help people.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Everybody stop.

This fucking thread isn't about prohibition, as I believe I mentioned quite politely in the FIRST PARAGRAPH OF THE OP.  If you must touch yourself in your special place, do it in the other thread.  Miserable monkey-fucking primate scum.  RWHN, we aren't here to talk about policy.  Everyone else, we aren't here to talk about RWHN's beliefs.

[AFK]

Uh, I haven't made any posts about policy. 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Uh, I haven't made any posts about policy.

Sure as hell did.  That weird definition of dependency, for example.

Which I am not going to argue about.

The premise of this fucking thread was simple.  But it had to be hammered back into the standard form, I see.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

In moderation and not every day drugs can be pretty fun (not magikal, though)

The big negative for me with drugs and the one that doesn't seem to get talked about that much is that it's easy to rely on them when you're bored or upset or just to deal with what you're doing at the time. But here's the thing, do that long enough and all the time you would have spent, painting, writing, going outside, creating, thinking, and making new friends was spent on drugs.

Sure it was all a good time but then you wake up and realize that years have passed. You didn't do the things you were really interested in. You're an artist that never made art. You're a writer that never wrote. You go to a party and realize you have nothing to talk about because all you've done is drugs for weeks. And the older you get the more pronounced this gap with the rest of the world becomes.

Alternate states of consciousness can be a lot of fun but if you're fucked up all the time it's not really an altered state, it's just a state.

If this angle (and the complementary "addiction is when you screw up your brain's reward system and seek out lame rewards instead of awesome ones") were used in educating children and adults about drugs, the world would be a better place.

you also find that 80%+ of the people you used to do drugs with weren't really friends at all, just someone to score from/ get high with. Sobering up (for me) was some lonely shit.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

you also find that 80%+ of the people you used to do drugs with weren't really friends at all, just someone to score from/ get high with. Sobering up (for me) was some lonely shit.

That is because, I think, as people use drugs more often, the drugs replace people as the priority.

Which is basically the root problem I was talking about in the OP.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

you also find that 80%+ of the people you used to do drugs with weren't really friends at all, just someone to score from/ get high with. Sobering up (for me) was some lonely shit.

That is because, I think, as people use drugs more often, the drugs replace people as the priority.

Which is basically the root problem I was talking about in the OP.

Yep. Was less of an issue with those friends I had mutual hobbies that weren't blazing a phat one with. Even the stoners.

Also, ever been to  dance party where everyone is doing coke? There's not many of your friends actually dancing. They are all in the basement huddled in 2's or 3's doing the nose hoover thing.

The only friends I have from those old days are the people I used to do pagan-y things with or LARPers and other assorted nerds.

[Lord Cataplanga]

I particularly liked McGrupp's emphasis on the cost of drug use being fundamentally an oportunity cost. That is, drugs themselves aren't bad, but there are so many better things you could be doing with your time.

You could say that same thing about many hobbies, though, unless your hobby is fighting crime or something.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So the supposed benefits aren't worth the handicap. Like cutting off a right breast to pull a bowstring better, it seems sensible at first but then there's the realization it sets everything off balance.

And you can always SCIENCE and then accidentally a CROSSBOW, and then the cutting off bit is TOTALLY unnecessary.

Right. And I SCIENCE best (For Great Justice) when my HEAD is /screwed on straight/.

Yep.  Eureka moments are overrated, and downplay the work involved.  Acid MIGHT give you results (maybe, probably not), work WILL, especially in the sciences.

Eureka moments are usually the result of months or years of working on and thinking about something, anyway; they don't come out of the blue, they're the culmination of a lot of hard (and lucid) work. That is not to say that altered perspectives cannot be occasionally useful; in fact, they are almost necessary for creative research to be done. However, altered perspectives aren't limited to drug use; on the contrary, we should be striving to experience them all the time, under our own power.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So the supposed benefits aren't worth the handicap. Like cutting off a right breast to pull a bowstring better, it seems sensible at first but then there's the realization it sets everything off balance.

And you can always SCIENCE and then accidentally a CROSSBOW, and then the cutting off bit is TOTALLY unnecessary.

Right. And I SCIENCE best (For Great Justice) when my HEAD is /screwed on straight/.

Yep.  Eureka moments are overrated, and downplay the work involved.  Acid MIGHT give you results (maybe, probably not), work WILL, especially in the sciences.

Eureka moments are usually the result of months or years of working on and thinking about something, anyway; they don't come out of the blue, they're the culmination of a lot of hard (and lucid) work. That is not to say that altered perspectives cannot be occasionally useful; in fact, they are almost necessary for creative research to be done. However, altered perspectives aren't limited to drug use; on the contrary, we should be striving to experience them all the time, under our own power.

Well, that's sort of what I was getting at.  You have to put the sweat in...This will garner far better results than praying to the LSD Gods.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

you also find that 80%+ of the people you used to do drugs with weren't really friends at all, just someone to score from/ get high with. Sobering up (for me) was some lonely shit.

That is because, I think, as people use drugs more often, the drugs replace people as the priority.

Which is basically the root problem I was talking about in the OP.

Yep. Was less of an issue with those friends I had mutual hobbies that weren't blazing a phat one with. Even the stoners.

Also, ever been to  dance party where everyone is doing coke? There's not many of your friends actually dancing. They are all in the basement huddled in 2's or 3's doing the nose hoover thing.

The only friends I have from those old days are the people I used to do pagan-y things with or LARPers and other assorted nerds.

I absolutely cannot stand cokeheads. Awful, boring, intolerable people who think  they're really interesting and smart but are actually just the worst kind of stuffed-shirt drones.