A Somewhat Serious One · 12:29am Oct 28th, 2015
Hmm.
As I write this, I can't help but wonder if I'm actually going to post it? I probably will, because, well. That's a hell of a catch. "Oh shit," you're thinking. "This clown is being all mysterious and serious. Mystserious, for short. I'm sure he has something extremely important to say, and also he's handsome and I'm going to give him all my money".
In which case hell yeah, man. Do that.
But anyway, yes. This is going to be a weird blog, but not by the usual standards. Worry not 'cause one of those is coming soon. Maybe tomorrow? Who knows. But nah this is a weird blog because it's coming out of absolutely nowhere.
I am a college student, y'see. I live with other students, in a house for students. Typical stuff. This year I'm the oldest one in my house -- everybody else is at least one year younger than me, and most are way younger. The two flatmates that I get along with the most are seventeen, turning eighteen by the end of the year.
I just participated in a thirty-minute conversation, in which I saw how they got excited by the possibility of taking drugs. Another of my flatmates has experience and contacts, and knows how to sell his stuff.
They called the dealer.
They've already reserved some mushrooms. The dealer is going to provide them with cocaine, ketamine, LSD, and metamphetamines.
It wasn't pretty, to be honest.
I mean, I get this is not really any place to talk about this? I write stories in which ponies get hit by giant statues, so I'm not expecting any kind of moral authority over anybody. That'd be silly.
But just... Don't do drugs. Please.
I've seen how it ends. I come from a city too big to be a small town, and I've seen way too many people who start doing cocaine for fun, and then go further. Pot, in my experience, is not an opening for harder drugs. I don't do pot (more on this later), but I know a lot of people who do (half my friends -- it's really spread in Spain), but cocaine? Completely different thing.
It's easy to get into drugs. They call to you, if you have a particular personality. No matter how many times 90s cartoons tell you that doing drugs is for losers -- tobacco is romanticised to hell and beyond, and drugs as a whole have this aura of being cool. They're forbidden, they're an act of rebellion, they're a middle finger to the authority. Wooo look at me I'm so badass.
"Recreational autodestruction," I call it, because I am serious when I say I'm a pedantic asshole you should kick in the head at any chance. Because that's the thing: it's not just about rebellion. Some people like to experiment. To get to feel things first-hand, to try everything new and then judge by themselves. Drugs are attractive, in that way.
I get that. I really do! I'm not exactly scared to say that drugs call to me, a lot. Call it being naturally curious, call it being the biggest idiot you'll ever see, but my first reaction whenever I hear of a new drug is curiosity. Then, some other things that I am scared to say. One of those might be about having sex with animals, but that's just because eventually I start to ramble even in my head, so let's ignore that thing.
But, y'know, I don't do drugs. I've had chances -- way too many, in my opinion -- but I don't even smoke. Never had a joint between my lips, and never will. I don't mind if you do that, because I consider marijuana a really really soft drug. Kinda like tobacco. But I'm still not gonna do it.
Because I know myself, and I know it calls to me, so I abstain from it. And I abstain from it because I have familiars and friends who have given in, and if you're thinking something along the lines of "oh god is this really going to turn into a sobbing story?" then worry not because it's not.
But one member of my family got into heavy drugs. He was a really intelligent person in his youth, the pride of the family. He lived up to that potential by taking so many drugs he looked like he was 50 by the time he was 20, and then beating up my mother, his wife, his ex-girlfriend, his girlfriend, and countless people that I never knew. Then he spent a couple years in jail. He went clean. He got out. Recently he's started doing drugs again, and is bringing hell to my family.
When I was in highschool, there used to be a guy that wandered the main door at 14:30, the hour when we got out. He was big, fat, bald, and had the eyes of a fish. He never talked, he just stared at you and sometimes tried to touch you or hit you, completely at random. Everybody knew him -- he used to be a student, and one night he did something, took something, and crossed a line that couldn't be crossed back. He has to be taken care of lately, I heard, because he's just getting worse.
There used to be a kid in my highschool. Cool guy. My sister kinda knew him, friend of a friend. I never really talked with him, personally. He took a little too many mushrooms one day, confronted his father about the way he treated his mother, and stabbed the guy seven times or so. Everybody agreed the father was an abusive bastard who hit his wife and maybe did something worse to his son. I don't know. He's dead now and the son is in jail.
My mother had cancer, and after two years bald, she got better. This happened when she was over forty, and had three children. She had to leave us and stay in the hospital for all that time. When she was around twenty, a friend of a friend passed her a pill, and she took it. She spent three days in the hospital, and came close to death. Way too close. Not so long ago, she admitted to me that she never feared for her life as much as during the second night, when the doctor told her that they had no idea what that pill was, and that the only thing they could do was wait and hope for the best. No, not even cancer was that scary.
I lost count around nine. Maybe they're less, maybe they're more. I don't know. I do know, however, that around nine of my old classmates left highschool and turned into drug dealers, because there's nothing else to do at this point. My father lives in the same town as them -- he can count with the fingers of one hand how many times he's seen any of them sober while walking down the streets. Their parents don't know what to do, but so far the town thinks that "nothing, they're never doing anything else" is a correct answer when it comes to this. It's not a town with nice people.
I don't know.
I don't think that every single time you snort a line an angel dies. That'd be silly. Some people say they only take drugs when they're partying, and that they are happy and can do whatever they want with their lives, and that alcohol and tobacco are more or less the same and we say nothing about it. I get that. I've seen that done.
But I don't do drugs, y'know.
They're really attractive. Sometimes, when I'm stressed, I want to do drugs. I want to try them so hard, because it sounds beautiful, to be able to just lose yourself in that kind of way. To live fully instead of living long, even if it's not really shortening your life -- it's the thrill of knowing you're doing something you shouldn't do.
It's a selfish act. It's claiming that your life is yours and nobody else's. It's suicide on a minor key.
I get that.
But I don't do drugs. Y'know.
Because I've seen that, well. There are many ways that can end. Some are good, some are bad. Most of them are bad.
Drugs are dangerous. They can destroy what you are. At one point, your personality just disappears, and all there's left is whatever you took that morning. Who cares, right? You're high all the time. At this point, not being high is not being yourself.
I don't know. I don't like it.
So I just saw two seventeen-year-olds that I actually like, that I can see as my friends, and they happily told me that oh yeah, we want to do that. And then maybe some more. The old, experienced flatmate admitted that at one point it became impossible for him to party without cocaine. Even if he promises himself that he's not gonna take any, the moment he gets drunk his opinion changes immediately, and he feels like shit afterwards. He sounded ashamed.
The other two kids thought that was pretty awesome. They really want to sounds like adults.
Meh. I'm twenty-one years old. I'm probably younger than most of you. Can't really call them "kids". But I saw that, I tried to convince them to maybe think about it twice, and they told me that instead of talking like that I should do drugs. I'd like them.
Probably, yeah. That's the scary part, I suppose.
I can't really ask you to do anything. Maybe you already know your opinions about drugs, and this entire blogpost is pissing you off. If that's so, I'm sorry, I suppose. Wasn't my intention. But... if I were you, I'd stay away from that world.
Don't get in that scene, please. If you can avoid it. I won't ask you to do it for the idiot who writes silly blog posts and has a name most of you think refers to a Lord of the Rings character (it does not). That'd be dumb. But, dunno.
Maybe do it for yourself. That'd be pretty cool.
Just my two cents. Sorry if this one was boring, or too personal. I'll post something silly tomorrow.
Wow.
This... this hit deep, honestly. I won't go into the details, because if I wanted to do that, I could easily procure a soapbox. (Or several, for that matter, but that's besides the point.) Basically, I know someone who, whilst not a heavy drug user, ended up getting addicted, built a meth lab (Which was fortunately discovered and disposed of before the police found out), given too many chances, etc. etc.
Anyways, he's in jail now, and reading this blog post just.... made me think of him, and that hit me. ... So yeah, I really agree with what you're saying, and I can only hope more people agree with you.
This person also happens to be my (half) brother. But that's a whole 'nother bucket of worms!
I'm repulsed by smoking because of the improbability of quitting.
I'm repulsed by the idiocy in injecting/snorting/smoking/eating foreign chemicals into your body to artificially generate a high.
I've seen how desperate people get for a smoke, never mind harder drugs.
And I've felt the intensity of meth being cooked...
...from three storeys away.
And people want that... that shit ... in their bodies.
Good blasted night. They can do it without me.
I hear you man. I am straight edge, myself.
Honestly, this is probably the scariest thing I've read about drugs in a long time. Schools should really do more to differentiate between hard drugs and soft drugs.
The internet is addictive, not in the sense people use the word addictive. In the sense the internet is addictive, something you grow dependent on or use as an anchor. I get antsy when I haven't connected to the internet in about six hours. Somethings are a stable in your life that you use to comfort yourself and the internet is probably the worse for me.
I decided to treat marijuana the same way I treat alcohol, offered to me at a party? Sure, whatever, it's a social thing, everyone is having a good time, it's not dangerous, can't really overdose like alcohol anyway. Then a family member offered it to me on a every other day basis. I had to go to the hospital to get blood drawn for a test, so, I decided to not do it for a long while so I wouldn't look like a stoner.
It then hit me that not doing it for 72 hours... the thought gave me an anxiety attack.
Just because something isn't addictive doesn't mean it isn't reliable, in a sense. Marijuana all but takes away your ability to feel concern and makes you feel great, I swear it would take a man of incredible caliber not to form a dependence on that after taking it once a month. I've been clean for a long time and I plan on staying that way. Not also that, but I've been watching out for things that could give me that sense of comfort that isn't a drug.
Listen to the silly assclown kids, marijuana isn't physically dangerous really, but in the wrong hands, it can cause a lot of damage.
I've got a friend that went into fairly heavy drug use and managed to pull himself out of it. Mostly by removing himself from the place where he was surrounded by other people who did them. Words straight from his mouth. "Don't do cocaine." He's even mentioned that he still feels like he wants them from time to time, especially when his life gets bad, but even then he knows that it isn't a good road.
I don't drink booze, I don't smoke, don't even drink coffee. So I can't really speak with any authority on the matter. My bad habits are spreadsheets and anime.
Yeah, I don't want anything messing with my mind. That's my defining feature! If I'm not "that one guy, the smart one" then I don't know who I am. So drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, all that stuff, none of that. Not even once. Because drunk me wouldn't be me.
On a slightly less serious note, we finally have a definitive answer for what you're smoking when you write this crazy stuff! You're high on friendship and nothin' else!
I have to agree. No drugs or alcohol for me. I'll play a video game if I want to have a fun time.
So, I'm gonna bring a different perspective. I do pot. In fact, my roommate just started to grow a little plant of pot just today (for personal consumption anyway). I smoke from time to time, and I also can stand (and had recently) several months without smoking marihuana without problem, and almost all my friends, my colleagues, my cousins and even my parents smoke pot (in differents levels, of course). I even have take cocaine two times and moshrooms once. I am even waiting for the oportunity of trying LSD, (I had the chances already, but I let it pass 'cause I'm waiting to do it right, in a calm place with supportive friends and a relaxed environment). Heck, I even live close to a country that just fully legalized the consumption and production of marijuana. (By the way at the same time, I don't smoke tobacoo and I drink alcohol moderatly if not scarcely).
And yet, I totally get you, and respect your opinion.
It's not all "happy feelings". I live in a city the size of New York or Los Angeles and I certanly know that drugs (specially those of low qualitys like crack) have a terrible effect in wide sections of the population. I had a friend at high school and at least two other close friends who suffered really hard times because their adictions, and they really had big adictions (though, really, In my case they were a small minority over dozens and dozens of friends who do drugs without problem).
Yet, and even I wouldn't exactly share your opinion over them, I do think that drugs are something we should take whit very, very serious respect. Something that is really worth it to take the time to think about, to think "why I'm wanting to take this? wich reasons are that motivate me? what it is this? which are they risk and qualities? how works that with me?, what I am risking (or not) and what I want to risk?" to understand the whys and the whats; and, one of the most importantes, to do it with supportive people. Because I think that not I, not most people I know, could have responsible habits with drugs if not because we were supported by friends and/or family wich, patiently, with no pressure and with experience, help us to understand all those things and find our personal way to them. (So yeah, friendship is magic, yay!) Without that all, I seriously would recommend anybody to don't do it. There are some things that I think you should do right or yo shouldn't do it.
Just my opinion, with respect; sorry for the grammar.
For medical reasons, from a young age I was always told never to do drugs, so I've never smoked tobacco or done anything 'soft'— I have plenty of prescription drugs, thank you very much.
When I got older, I was given permission to have limited exposure to alcohol, so I know my limit is 2 beers or one mixed drink, and I stick to it, so I've never gone overboard. Admittedly, when I got cancer, I wanted to try marijuana not only because of the potential medical benefits, but at the same time I could see what the hype was about when I refrained from smoking during my college years. Unfortunately, I still haven't been given the thumbs-up to try pot because it has other medical effects that could make things difficult for me. After all these years, at 25, I've managed to stay away from any kind of drug addiction, but I've seen friends succumb to them. It's not pretty.
I'll stick with my video games and ponies, thanks.
The most powerful drug I have ever taken was adderall, and that was purely for medical purposes. I hated it. Made my chest hurt and my heart pump sooooo fast.... Always scared me whenever I took it. So, if I can barely take drugs from doctors without worry, there is no way I would be dumb enough to take drugs from a dubious source. Heck, I hate it when my thoughts feel wrong, like when I tried alcohol that one time or some anti-depressants, so anything other than prescription drugs in a no for me.
The only things Loopy is addicted to is coffee, lemon curd yoghurts and speaking in third person.
So, a well written blog my good fellow.
Nope. you've mentioned a few times that you are a Spaniard; therefore, your nick is, most likely, your kingdom/province/whatever of origin. Pretty much the same as if I changed mine to "Cancun", "Mexico City" or "Cem Anahuac".
The problem with drugs is that you take a chemical that you don't know how to dose without any kind of medical supervision and that will have unknown effects on you.
I occasionally smoke tobacco (cigars) and drink alcohol, I'm not against pot even if I don't use it and I'm for making most drugs legal with the clause that they will be treated like other prescription-drugs (there should be an easier way to distinguish those words).
What happened to your flatmates is that they took some highly psychoactive stuff from unknown origins and in random amounts, and that is paramount to playing russian-roulette for shit and giggles, a very bad idea.
i am already addicted to most of the good stuff in life, like food, drinks, ponies, books, families and etc,
No way am I gonna be addicted to anything else because I know it will ruin me financially and personally, and I have too much pride to allow myself tp ruin someone else
Personally I don't do drugs and won't for medical reasons. I'm severely allergic to a lot of strong relaxants I've taken from breaking bones and surgeries, and my system doesn't handle stimulants like even caffeine too well either. If I spent days throwing up and hallucinating from vallium and oxycodone, I don't even want to know what the strong stuff will do to me.
I've been tempted a lot too though. I'm curious about what it's like after being around a lot of people who do it in my school and who are fine. But I also don't want to possibly die, soo.
I work in the respiratory department of my local hospital alongside other medical technicians, doctors, and nurses. Plenty of my patients, and my coworkers' patients, become our patients only as a product of their drug habits.
They come in short of breath, or worse, and beg to be "fixed." We call them "Frequent Fliers" because it doesn't matter how many times we fix them, or how many times they are told that they should stop their drug habits, they always come back with the same problem for the same reason, time and time again.
Had a lady a few months ago come in for such a reason. She got fixed up again, told what she should stop doing again, and she decided to go to a party to celebrate being healthy. She even promised that this night would be her last night (something we hear a lot). A beer and a cigarette later and she was back. She died that morning. Her husband didn't even show up because, by that point, it was the usual for them. He came later when he was told she had died though.
And this was, as far as I was made aware of, just the product of tobacco cigarettes, one of the so called "soft" or "light" drugs. Compound that over a decade or three and not only do you have a body that is failing you, but you also have a chemical dependency, and life-long habits that can take years to break.
It's disheartening how many real-life examples we get in just my tiny town, let alone how frequently it happens around the world. It's due to this that some of my more cynical coworkers call teenage smokers "Future Frequent Fliers."
I understand that there are medicinal benefits to some drugs (such as marijuana), but unless a doctor has given you the go-ahead, just don't do it. Avoid drugs, including the "Soft" drugs. They really are "Recreational auto-destruction." They'll come back to haunt you later.
COPD, emphysema, lung cancer, etc. do not result in painless deaths. And it's not just "old people" that get affected; cigarettes affect everyone at different rates. I've had patients in their thirties who are falling apart from their "soft" habits.
You know it's serious when there are no tags.
Really, this was - I don't want to say 'great', I hesitate to describe things of a more serious nature like this using positive words - but really well-written, and effective. Coming from someone who's never been involved with anything of the kind (indeed, I'm not even of the legal age to drink or smoke if I even wanted to), but who has somewhat known a few people who have done so and have been the worse for it, it was far more effective than anything I've ever been shown or told from sources of 'greater authority'.
...You know what, hell with it, everyone else seems to be sharing their stories so I will too.
Since I moved to a new school - of a fairly high prestige locally, I promise that's relevant - a few years ago there were two particular students in my grade, both of whom I was at least somewhat friendly with. One of them was more of the sporty kind so I didn't have much to say with him, but he was pretty nice all the same; the other a little closer, somewhere between the territories of "friend" and "friend of a friend". Regardless, both seemed like good kids, nice, did alright academically and seemed quite normal.
Around November 2013, our grade was called in for a meeting and were informed that the two of them had been riding a quad-bike and had been in an accident. One of them, the sporty one, was not too badly injured and would just be in hospital a little while. The other had been very seriously injured, and was currently in a coma. It was uncertain whether he was going to live.
Eventually, he did recover - though with a full restructuring of his face - and returned to school around May last year; the other guy had already been back for quite a while. They both seemed, once again, to be fairly fine and normal people and were getting back into the swing of things. Then, about six months later, our grade was called together for a meeting once again. A kid in one of the grades below had been caught in possession of drugs within school premises, and the dealership had been traced back to one of these two guys. He wasn't expelled, he was 'asked to leave' - the difference being that this way, an expulsion be on his record when he went to apply to other schools.
And then, just a few months after that, the other guy - the one who had been in a coma - left this school and moved states. I think it was more a family decision than anything connected to the previous events, but not too long prior to that I had overheard multiple conversations in which it became pretty clear that he was pretty heavily involved with drugs as well. Since he moved I haven't heard from him - we kind of drifted apart over time, no real reason - and I have no idea how he's doing now, if he's kicked the habit or still stuck on drugs even in another state. I also have no idea to this day what the circumstances were of that initial crash - if it was that experience that set them both down that track, or they had already been in that situation prior - but I have my suspicions.
So I guess there are two morals to this incredibly long-winded story.
The first, the more obvious one - drugs are goddamned dangerous. I don't know what drugs each of them were doing - I probably wouldn't know the difference if I did, I'm more or less oblivious to the details of drugs and happy to keep it that way - but whatever drugs they were, they certainly hurt each of these guys' lives in some way, and quite possibly may have almost gotten them both killed.
And the second thing I can draw from this story, this one's more unique and pertains more to the legal side of things - just because you're careful about who knows about your drug use, doesn't mean other people will be. That first guy seemed totally normal, and I really wouldn't have guessed (and I don't think many other people would have either) that he made a habit of using drugs, let alone dealing them. But then some other kid was an idiot and brought those drugs to school, and as a result he no longer attends a good school and will never be allowed to leave the country for the rest of his life. So, yeah. Just because you think you'll be smart about drugs, doesn't mean someone else won't be an idiot and make your situation the worse for it. Just don't even take the risk in the first place.
Oh, man. That is long. I feel kinda bad now, clogging up the comments like this, but I guess I just felt like what I had to say was relevant - and, hopefully, useful or convincing to somebody.
TL;DR: 1. Drugs are serious shit. 2. Just because you think you can trust yourself with drugs, that doesn't mean you can trust other people with them. Just don't be an idiot, and keep yourself out of that kind of situation.
So, I suppose I could just be quiet, considering that obviously my opinion is not the most popular and that alot of people here is telling some really personal things. But I guess that if I'm respectfull this is still a public place so we can interchange opinions. So, here it goes...
I agree with thath drugs are dangerous. I agree with drugs are chemichals. But that's the thing, they are chemichals, different chemichals and like that they are different things. We consume a lot of chemichals in our life, (from medicinal drugs to food) that we use without problem because we know that scientist have studied them and know their pros and contras. But the things is, drugs aren't just misterius chemichals which nobody knows nothing about, they are chemichals studied with different propierties each one and differents effects. So, I agree that drugs are dangerous, but I think that I should give my opinion in this topic, wich is that some drugs are really dangerous (like cocaine, heroine, crack, extasis, etc), and some drugs are less dangerous even than a lot of things we usually consume, and I'm talking about marihuana.
I'm not doing a apology of drugs, like: hey, go do some drugs now!, BUT, I think that the only way to approach a topic like this is intelligently with all the data and info.
I not only know dozens and dozens, not only youngs, but grown up and olders peopls who smoked pot all his life and don't have any kind of addiction. The "legalization parade" made each year, here, usually involves hundreds of thoundsands of people, who smoke weed and don't have mayor problems with that (So is not just my circle of people), the highest authority of drugs in my country, the chief of the toxicology department of our biggest hospital, is a public defender of marihuana, and, again, I live neart to a country who legalized the production, use and sale of marihuana two years ago and the country is no way suffering a wave of addictions (in fact, they have been highlighted by its positive results about drug crime thoug that is other discussion).
Anyway, I just want to apport my point of view wich offer a different perspective about some things, because I think we should take our decisions with all the point of view and with a serious approach AND as I said before, I do think that drugs are something really, really serious who should be aproacch with all seriousnes and consideration, and honestly, I know that most people don't do it that way, so I do recommend people to consider drugs like a really really dangerous things.
So well, I expect that I have pointed my point of view with respect to the opnion and experiences of people who disagree and I hope they also can respect mine.
3502075 I think you're bending some of the drugs into simple terms. Very often it isn't just the main drugs, rather another whole slew of less popular, synthesized drugs. One substance that was prevalent in my area is a synthetic marijuana. Kids thought it was just like the normal marijuana, but it evades your point about drugs being substances that are to be studied and understood. The drug is often just a mixture of cheap substances made by some random guy in some drug lab, and there are a lot of dangers of using it.
A lot of deaths in drug use, especially marijuana are like what happened to Aragon's mom: they took something that they didn't know about, that no one knew about, and the effects became rampant.
Sorry this is so choppy, I'm writing on my phone.
There are a lot of stories in this thread, so here's mine:
The first time I ever learned about hard drugs was the summer I turned eight years old. My uncle was supposed to be watching me, my brother (who was six), and his son (who was four) but he decided he wanted to hang out with his friends as well. I was eight years old and had to be the adult for two small children and four adults who had enough methamphetamine between them that I could smell it in my hair... I had to be in charge of them for nearly two hours until my mother came to pick us up.
The same uncle wound up setting up a credit card scam before he had to flee the state for a year or two to dodge some warrants. He came back and got involved with a different woman than my previous cousin's mother. They had a baby ten years ago... Before she was two years old, her mother died of an overdose. As callous as it sounds, that was the best thing that could have happened to my cousin. Everyone thought she was developmentally challenged as a result of a birth defect or genetic condition. As it turns out, it was neglect or abuse of some kind. Within three months she was talking, walking on her own, and acting like a totally normal 1 & 1/2 year old. My cousin is a bright, healthy, normal fifth grader because her mother dying finally get through to my junkie uncle.
Drugs that alter your brain chemistry that much are bad... really bad. The level of stimulation and the strength of that addiction terrifies me. I've never done more than smoke a little pot or take a few (legitimately prescribed) painkillers because I am terrified of finding out what kind of monster sleeps inside of me... The fact I have hereditary angioedema so without my medication I can literally asphyxiate as a result of stress also factors in, but even before I was diagnosed, I knew I was never going to be involved with drug culture because of what I had already experienced.
3502121 that's true. That's way I support the idea that drugs should be something regulated by the state (like in my neighbour country wich I refered previously) like any other chemical product (I work in the pharmaceutical industry, by the way, thoug I'm just a worker) and there should be public education about drugs, specially about how dangerous they are. There is a totally valid point in that drugs is not only about someone wanting or not to try new things and growing their own seeds and all that as a personal thing, but that also there is a terrible criminal industry of narcotraphic wich is one of the biggest bussines in the world which has no interest at all in the life of people and use all kind of terrible drugs and methods to catch addicts. That's just a fact.
But what is another discussion (wich I would prefere not to aproach in the interest of not going to far) is what to do with that, indistinctly of each personal opinion about personal consuption, that terrible industry is still there. Personally I think that the Uruguaian way, with legalization, legal regulation, state intervention and public education is the best way to destroy narcotrhaphic... But, that's another hot topic.
I couldn't agree more with this.
The ideal is that nobody took any drugs, in my opinion, though I'm biased in this matter. Seeing how that's not possible, legalizing some of the drugs to take care of the crimes and making sure people know what the hell is going on with their bodies is by far the best solution.
Doens't make it less uncomfortable, though. I still don't like drugs.
I'm often glad that I have no idea where to even get drugs around here. I hear meth is big, but other than houses burning down or people being arrested, I'm pretty well sheltered to the world of drugs.
Of course, I've also known enough people who had a bad time doing pot that I wouldn't even do that, much as I agree it's 'soft'.
I'm 22. October 20th is my one-year date, after about four years lost to opiates and methamphetamine. I get pegged for being 30ish constantly.
I've lost friendships, I've watched people OD, I've OD'd myself. My apartment back in SC was totally wrecked after I got fucked up and started playing with my knife.
But now I'm clean, I make 2k a month, and I can't imagine going back to that. To me, drug addicts are not even people. Trash. The people that peddle drugs, monsters.
Unlike the majority of people here, I don't agree with marijuana use. Anything that affects my mental faculties is terrifying.
"I've smoked pot forever and I'm not stupid" Marijuana destroys gray matter. White matter takes over for the damaged parts.
"Pot doesn't cause cancer" in a study of heavy users, their lungs were found to have precancerous tumors. There's an interesting effect of THC on cancerous cells... but that has a limit. Besides the tar and lung damage from inhaling smoke. (Smoke particles are like tiny razorblade balls.)
"You can't OD on pot" It's difficult to fatally overdose. But when oversaturated with THC, users become paranoid and aggressive. Or catatonic.
"Cleaner than cigarettes" When put through a fucking mass spectrometer, pot smoke contains five times the tar and all the carcinogenic chemicals contained in tobacco smoke. Without the benefit of the mild nootropic (nicotine increases bloodflow in the brain).
Now... if I manufactured LSD/DMT, or I personally knew the chemist and saw their setup myself, and the product was produced with my intent in mind (deepening thought, broadening mental horizons) I'd do it in a heartbeat. The only things I'd go back to are psychotropics and things like Adderall that make my brain work much more gooder.
Oh yeah. It's also addictive. A study showed that a high percentage of heavy users and an even higher percentage of teenaged users exhibited addictive behavior over it. You can become chemically, physically, and mentally dependant upon it.
There are a couple things I'd like to say.
First: "Pot has no negative health effects!", "Weed isn't addictive!", "It's good for you!", etc. Let me remind you that back in like the 60s or so, doctors would recommend tobacco to improve general health and well-being. Fast forward 50ish years and tobacco is hailed as a cancer-giving, heart-killing, life-destroying demon.
Would you really trust an illegal substance with no intrinsic advantages over tobacco to do better for no real reason?
Another thing: one study tried to quantify the harmfulness of drugs according to their impact on both the user (health side-effects, including psychological) and society (i.e. surrounding people and their property).
The "safest" drugs? LSD and shrooms, with virtually no physiological side-effects, and a generally non-violent and non-self-harmful psychological impact, plus they're barely addictive if at all. Provided you don't OD and go on a murdering spree a la TF2 Pyro, you should be fine.
The worst offenders? Alcohol, followed by heroin, with cocaine and tobacco very close up. Weed was somewhere near the middle - not at all on the safest side of the spectrum.
TLDR: don't do drugs, or alcohol, or tobacco. If you really really wanna try drugs and be a rebel and shit, get some shrooms or something, and be responsible with a buddy and small doses. And weed is far, far too overglorified, while heroin, opiates and other shit like that will fuck you up big time obviously
Finally, story time, since everybody's doing it! Don't worry, I'll try to keep it short, given my already pretty gargantuan comment. It's about my uncle; out of the first 12 or so years of my life (I'm 16 currently), he spent nearly all his time in prison for various things, while doing hardcore heroin. Every time he went out, he'd spend maybe 2-4 weeks free, then steal a car for a ride or something while high as balls, then back in he went for another year or two or three. By the end of it all, he had AIDS, hepatitis C (the worst one whiw), tuberculosis, a crippling addiction, and over a decade of prison experience. He was the literal definition of a wreck of a man.
Oh and he recovered by the way. Somehow. Clean for several years, still on some medication for AIDS but otherwise essentially in good health, and still a huge asshole apparently. IDK, I've barely ever met him. But really, don't end up like him, kids. I still think the fact that he's alive, let alone thriving - he's having kids now! - is nothing short of a miracle.
Well, I guess I'll add my two cents.
I live in a relatively small and sleepy little town of a few thousand, so my limited personal experiences probably don't translate to most people. However, I do know a good number of people who use or have used a variety of drugs, though I mostly know them through a friend of a friend.
Most of these people have jobs, stable lives, families, etc. A few of them don't. Only one person I know of or have heard of is actually a wreck due to drugs. The person in question has used just about every drug available for decades and used them heavily at that. This person isn't violent or particularly self-destructive, but they're a wreck and they're never going to get out of the hole they've dug for themselves.
They also have a child. Said child also uses drugs, though not to the degree that the parent does. They are young and could potentially make a decent life for themself, however, they are also stupid, reckless, treat drugs as interchangable if they are even vaguely similar, and have the impulse control of a chipmunk. I foresee a similar fate as their parent, though perhaps not quite as bad.
Another person I know, a sort-of friend, started doing drugs real early in their life and it's cause quite a lot of problems for them throughout the years. Not anything particularly heavy, just regularly and early. This combined with a home that wasn't the most stable while growing up, hanging out with the wrong people, and a fuse shorter than a planck length when drinking something other than beer has resulted in a rather checkered past. They've since mellowed out, straightened themselves out for the most part, and stuck to drinking beer when drinking. They haven't stopped using drugs, only cut back, but some maturing and not drinking strong spirits has resulted in that being a non-issue.
The fact is that, in my personal experience, alcohol is the drug that's done the most harm.
One example would be when one of the local A-Team (A reference to soccer actually, not the TV-show. The "A" stands for alcoholics.), a friendly group of local drunks that spend most of their days sitting on a parkbench downtown, died due to liver failure recently.
Another would be a man that lives across from my apartment. He used to harass my best friend's famliy all the time. Bumming rides to, and money for, the liquor store, borrowing money and never paying it back, being threatening, putting an axe through their mailbox, etc. Then he went to jail for a decade. Murder according to the rumor mill.
Nowadays he's chilled out a lot, he just walks around in the stairwell in his underwear, leaves random trash in the stairwell (a frying pan, among other strange things), hangs his wet towel on the handrail, etc. He also did and still does work part-time on my friend's family farm. Yes, that's the same people he harassed.
I've tried a quite a few drugs myself: alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, dextroamphetamine, methylphenidate (ritalin), morphine, DMT (anahuasca), salvia divinorum, LSD. I can't say that many of them held any particular attraction, though from personal observation I seem to be in the minority when it comes to that opinion. Out of all of them I can only say that I'm fond of cannabis and LSD, though I've only tried the latter once. I guess alcohol has it's place too, though I don't particularly like it.
As for habits, I drink maybe once a month and smoke three or four times a year on average.
What's the point of all of this? There isn't one, or if there is it isn't intentional. I guess it could be something along the lines that some drugs are worse than other drugs and that most people can handle it but some people really, really can't.
No one is actually going to change their habits just because some dude on the internet tells a horror story or tells them to change, so if I have any bits of advice to share it's the following:
Know your dealer, know your drug, know yourself.
Always have an experienced sitter present when trying something new.
Avoid using drugs when your mindset or the setting you're in isn't good, especially mood enhancing ones like alcohol or hallucinogenic ones. This applies to the immediate present as well as the long term.
Finally, if you need information a good place to start is Erowid.org.
And that ends this rambling mess of a post. It ended up being two dollars rather than two cents, but I am a long-winded bastard.
Agree with everything here, fuuuuck those things. Fuck people who complains about being short of money and then wastes two hundred bucks in an hour worth of chemicals, fuck dudebros who will cheerfully say "And I, like, woke up in my own vomit" like they are clever for it, fuck people that, if you enter their cars, you are sure to get a headache and want to puke, both for the smell of whatever they smoke and for the cheap perfume they use to try to hide the smell. But most of all, fuck people who start with the "But I need it to write/paint/sing/relax!" thing. If you need to sniff out that crap to get rid of the phobia you have of being yourself, I maybe can feel sad for you, if I can gather enough fucks.
Fuck them all. Had my fill of that people already and I am barely twenty years old. And I say this as a jobless person with quite a few problems in the coco, mind you, I don't say it out of arrogance. I say it out of knowing what it does to people and not wanting to get involved with more passive suicides.
My dad use to be a drug addict. He said before I was born he was taking drugs since he was about 15. He said he took every thing: pot, cocaine, speed; you name it he did it.
He said that one he found out I was actually his kid from a paternity test; he quit everything for me; and he did drugs for over 40 years and he quit through sheer willpower. In my entire life since I could remember I have never seen my dad do drugs. He quit because he didn't want me getting into that world at all. Ever since I could really understand what drugs were my dad has threatened me that if I ever take drugs he will beat my ass, and I thank him for it.
I personally am not even interested with drugs and hopefully never will be. I thank my dad for keeping me away from drugs.