This post I find disagreeable in so many ways. First alcohol and cigarettes should be illegal? All drugs should be illegal? The fact is it is natural to indulge shifts in consciousness. In fact I never want to be in a room with somebody who has never taken a drug. There is a lot of problems with those people. A lack of exploring this world? this life? your mind? reality?. Just blindly listen to the leaders we have without question? The real problem lies in "drugs are cool" more than anything. So much beautiful art and culture has derived from drugs. To just shut that down. To stay in this sober state, this worker state, it is a horrifying thought to think that is what was meant. Kids spin in circles to get dizzy, and with age that pleasure becomes unsatisfying.
And life isn't about stability, safety, those are cultural values. It's about learning. Shit if it wasn't for drugs I probably would have taken my life long ago. If it wasn't for being mentally crushed by drugs and recovering from it I wouldn't know anything about who I am. The thought of my confused teenage self remaining is just disgusting. My intelligence, awareness, appreciation, joy, creativity has increased dramatically. Psychoactive substances in nature aren't here out of the contradictory big bang. To propose we stay safe, sober, and live to maintain
personal longevity produces an unsatisfied understanding of this world that is either repressed with constant faith of religion, and other such escapism or it is satisfied. I don't care how somebody chooses to live, but there are people who want to come to terms through experience. The idea of locking people away among murderers for picking mushrooms off the ground, and seeing it as justice, is a result of a cultural psychoses.
I don't understand why there is so much faith in the lies. Your US government hates you. We are playing a game with con artists and sociopaths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
I won't repress my hatred of this predicament, and dehumanize myself to be polite. The real problems lie within the constructs of societies that we're founded off the mass kidnapping, rape, and cultural destruction of natives ( Canadian history ), that place value on the possession of things more than love. We're headed towards a desert so we can produce convenience, and you want to take away my ability to get drunk? Then to create a safe place make ropes, razors, and jumping illegal. The starving artist within me just can't accept. Sorry if anything seemed harsh. I hate nobody just ideas. Other viewpoints need to be heard though the sad thing with freedom of speech is consideration is rare.
I think a lot of people know things are beyond messed up by now.
We will see by thumb ups or my out-casting I suppose. I spent too much time on this to delete it.
When you are talking about policies for a government with 300 million+ constituents, it is extremely risky to make the majority of drugs legal. It's not necessarily that I think they're all 100% bad, and I would definitely say the drug scheduling/sentencing structure is in dire need of a overhaul. It's just that some people can use drugs responsibly, while most cannot. Also, many drugs such as nicotine and alcohol cause enough deaths (or have the potential to) to be made illegal. Which is why on a policy basis, both should be made illegal. But, I do think that there should be some way to legally allow people who can use high-risk drugs responsibly to use them. The main problem with that is how you'd make that work.
My family has a significant history of drug abuse, and so has the town I grew up in. I've seen drug addiction destroy a lot of people's lives. Not everyone comes away from it in good shape. This is mainly why I do not support the legalization of the vast majority of drugs. Brain damage and other health risks are also critical reasons for that. I do agree with you that people who are not violent drug offenders should absolutely not be put away in prison alongside murderers. I would say that traffickers of drugs should be put in jail, but I'm unsure of what kind of sentencing structure would be needed. It's just not acceptable for citizens to be trafficking any illegal drug in my opinion because drugs in the wrong hands = calamity. You have to look at it from a governing perspective.
I get what you mean, living only to create convenience and never to explore and express yourself through whatever means you see fit (as long as you don't hurt others) is a life of slavery (or seems like it... surrounding yourself with people you love really helps regardless of the circumstances). It's a life of repression of the mind. I would argue that you don't have to do drugs to have that expression though, and you could spare yourself from a lot of mental turmoil by staying away from drugs. In terms of using drugs for personal exploration and expression, it's really a decision someone has to reach on their own, and people drumming it up makes younger people want to use them, which is not good at all. Younger people are not mature enough to make that kind of decision (generally speaking, but I'm pretty confident in saying that) and are usually harmed by drugs more than adults are (brain damage and trauma are both worse for younger people generally because they are not as mature as adults). There's also the problem of people chasing spiritual experiences through drugs or resorting to drugs anytime they feel bad. You can really get seriously hurt with both of those habits, regardless of the drug (mushrooms are probably an exception to this, as there's clear evidence supporting their therapeutic use and ability to increase connection of the networks in the brain, but they can cause some pretty seriously traumatic experiences if you're not responsible).
"Psychoactive substances in nature aren't here out of the contradictory big bang", what do you mean by "contradictory", and what is your evidence for that? This may be your understanding of it, but I don't feel like that's scientifically supported. Life is extremely complicated, and to dismiss the idea that certain substances are coincidentally psychoactive, is very bold, and goes against all the evidence I've seen/heard. I don't know of any studies that particularly target the question of why certain substances are psychoactive, but I've never heard of any that said "certain substances were specifically 'made' so that particular animals like humans could get a buzz". However, I would like a scientific explanation as to why there are cannabinoid and opiate receptors in the brain. I'd say there's a lot more info about the evolutionary side of this topic than we currently know.
"Make ropes, razors, and jumping illegal", this is almost a straw-man logical fallacy; if you directly assumed I'd support that, it would be that fallacy. You took my argument far out of the parameters it was set in. Just pointing that out.
About the government specifically, I do not think that saying "the U.S. government hates its people" creates a well-founded argument. People are very trigger-happy about calling conspiracy on governments, especially the U.S., without real evidence to support it. Sure, the U.S. government does some pretty ballsy things like MKULTRA, but to say the entirety of the government hates its people is pretty ridiculous. That's a sweeping generalization on a massive scale. If the government hated us, they'd probably make our lives much more miserable. Instead, we have one of the best standards of living in the entire world, and the government, with all its flaws, supports that (if they didn't, we wouldn't have it).
About your experiences with drugs that broke you down and encouraged you to build yourself back up, in my personal opinion, I'd say that probably wasn't entirely necessary. It's very common for teenage boys to go through a tremendous amount of personal conflict and turmoil and turn to drug abuse. When you say you probably would have taken your life, I'd say that if you were taking drugs at the time you were considering doing that, the drugs were probably weakening you mentally. But of course, I can't speak to your experience. My main point there is, other than that drugs trash your judgment even when you're sober because you're chasing a good feeling of some kind (or spirituality), relying on drugs to bring you out of a slump makes it harder for you to believe and trust yourself. It's hard to stand on your own and lead a happy life when you have to use a drug to do it.
Sorry if this jumped around or seemed harsh. I just replied to topics of your post as I thought about them and didn't feel the need to sugar coat anything. Know that my views come totally from combining what I've seen/heard/experienced personally, and my looking at the situation objectively and from the perspective of a government. They're not regurgitations of the ideas of any political party.
I appreciate your thoughtful reply.
). The language at the end of the statement "The study only showed subtle differences between users and non-users brains, which are not actually physical damage" is what I was referring to. Thanks for clarifying; your idea that they could be reversible adaptations would be great for former users if it was true. I commend you for abstaining from MJ. Even if it doesn't cause brain damage, it's certainly produces a pungent odor, and the pervasive use probably influences high school kids to use it. Aside from the potential side effects you mentioned, studies have shown some pretty serious negative effects for younger people that use it, namely reduced IQ. I'm unsure of what I would vote on that in my state, I think that the drug problem in the U.S. doesn't need to be exacerbated any further, and that alcohol and cigarettes should be made illegal (and I'd most likely vote that weed should be kept illegal). The problem is that it's very difficult to stop people from using them, and the current laws are more harmful than helpful to users, so there's no way to really win there.
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