Because in this time in history there is soooooo much information on which drugs do what to you. The key in this discussion is not the use of drugs, it’s the use of addictive drugs. It’s a moral failing to step off a cliff when the consequences are known ahead of time.
When you are a teenager or young adult - which is when a lot of addictions to recreational drugs start - none of that applies to you. You are the invincible exception. You’ll be able to start smoking cigarettes and quit - and cancer is SO far away, you won’t live that long anyway because - well, forty is OLD. Yeah, some people overdose, but there are people with cocaine habits that live productive lives - your Dad knows this guy.
There’s also the problem of bleed-over from things like DARE and marijuana. As a teen or young adult, you’ll ignore information you have like that because you’ll have rejected the authority’s position on the topic of drugs entirely. Teens don’t reject one topic, they reject everything that person/people says/say about drugs in whole.
“They lied about marijuana. They’re probably lying about heroin, too! Pass me that needle!”
It’s not so explicit inside the brain, but it’s what happens when you don’t go “We don’t want you to do any of this stuff, but this stuff is more okay than that stuff over there.” That sort of teaching would go a long way to guide a naturally rebellious stage of human life into the right decisions instead of trying to make them fear everything.
I’m just saying it’s dumb, not necessarily a moral failing, but for the same reasons.
Denial is a key factor in addiction. The more addicted a person becomes the stronger the denial.
It can be as basic as flat denial. “I absolutely don’t have a problem”
Or it can sound like, “I know I’m using too much right now but I can quite any time I want.”
Later stage denial could sound like, “I know I have a problem but there’s no way I can ever quit anyway.”
This is puzzling to people unfamiliar with addiction.
We all know – as fact – that some people who try serious drugs will become addicted, and their lives will be altered almost to the point of self-destruction. It’s also repeatedly been said that we can’t know in advance who will fall into the trap of addiction.
Therefore, trying these substances is essentially Russian Roulette. Sooner or later, someone is going to pull the trigger on a loaded chamber.
The decision to take that risk – for what, entertainment? – could be said to be a failing of some kind.
The more I think about it the more I add in some level of poor reasoning skills associated with age. And I would also add in levels of self destruction.
But still, none of my friends ever entertained the idea of heroin or meth. An occasional joint “maybe”. It was just considered too dangerous to venture into drugs we knew were dangerous to use. It’s not like we didn’t do stupid things but that was considered to be bending the needle on the stupid meter. That was before we knew just exactly how dangerous these drugs were.
That’s what I’m saying! I know plenty of people who started drinking in high school, and who also smoked pot, dropped acid and even did some ecstacy. And almost every single one left it at that; like you say, it’s starting to edge into the red on the stupidometer.
I just don’t get how someone, no matter how fucked up their life may be, can put any conscious thought into using something like meth, and have the answer be “Sure, makes sense.” It has to be an unthinking thing, or a case where they don’t feel the consequences apply to them.
I think it depends on how we use the term morality. If we’re going to define morality as something along the lines of not hurting other people, then addiction isn’t a moral failing. If we go with following some pre-defined set of rules, then it’s just a question of whether addiction is within those sets of rules or not. Personally, I don’t find those sorts of definitions to be very interesting or helpful in working out moral dilemmas.
Personally, my view of morality is about making decisions with the purpose of maximization/optimization over a series (lifetime) of choices. From that perspective, I think it’s fair to say that addictions of any sort don’t serve toward optimization, but at the same time, we make tons of decisions all the time that, to some degree or another, do not. And so, in that regard, I think the seriousness of the addiction is indicative of the degree of moral failing. So, someone who is addicted to heroine is making less moral decisions that someone who smokes a lot of pot. In fact, from that perspective, I could also argue that, addiction is in fact one of the most immoral aspects because addiction is a loss of self-determination, and thus a lessened ability to make decisions in the first place. How can I reasonably make any decisions when I’m compelled to do something without evaluating the consequences fairly?
All of that said, I’m not really sure how useful it is to look at addictions, or really any similar moral failings, as reasons to shun people. By the same regard, it’s an immoral act because it only serves to reinforce their situations.
Maybe. Or maybe it’s that you need a combination of addiction and denial to be a using addict. A person with the addiction but not the denial would realize they had a problem and avoid drugs.
Think of addiction as being like a severe allergic reaction to peanuts. A person with the allergy who’s in denial might kill himself by eating some peanuts. Another person with the same allergy avoids peanuts and never has a problem. That doesn’t mean his condition was less severe; it just means he avoided the thing that causes him problems.
What about the law? these drugs are illegal (in most places). So you choose to break the law-isn’t it like robbing a store or driving faster than the speed limit? Breaking the law is a morality issue.
More of an obedience issue and a risk-assesment issue.
If the law is perceived as injust or wrong, it can be a moral choice to break it. Okay, major slippery slope, but my point is, people can see themselves as moral and still choose to break a law.
Discussions of morality are an attempt to feel self righteous or ‘other than’, in my opinion.
There are lots of forms of addiction. Most movie stars and several great artists could easily be better described as attention whore ‘addicts’. That CEO turning your mutual funds profitable? Lots of them are ‘addicted’ to work, with suffering families and a high divorce rate. Spouses of Dr’s complain they are ‘addicted’ to the work, (and lets all say Thank You! Because we all benefit from it!), again high divorce rates. Then we get to the Kartrashians. Addiction to attention much? Lots of highly successful IT/scientists/researcher types seem to be people ‘addicted’ to solving puzzles.
There are a lot of socially accepted addictions. And in truth a person could become addicted to almost anything. Escape, self medication, genetic predisposition, parental modelling, societal acceptance, etc, etc, means there must be many differing views of addiction, it seems to me.
Neil was right when he said, ‘…a little bit of it in everyone’. Standing in judgment of others moral failings serves only one purpose, it seems to me, to make the speaker sound/feel righteous. And in so doing separate themselves, in an ‘I am not that!’, sort of way. When maybe the truth is really, we need to vocalize our judgment of others as a way to insulate or insure we don’t ever become ‘that’. Of course that’s not how life works in reality.
I have a fifteen year old I’m homeschooling due to problems with weed. The problem with weed for a teenager isn’t that its going to kill you or rot your teeth or have you turning tricks for a high. The problem with weed is unless you are a hell of a lot smarter than my son is, it severely impacts your ability to do Algebra. When I went to school in the early 80s, this wasn’t a big deal - we passed you through school with Cs. I was near the top of my high school class - today my daughter, who is bright - is doing the math work I was doing THREE YEARS before I was doing it. My more average son is on the same pace I was when I was accelerated thirty years ago. Similar concerns around English - the quality of papers they are being expected to churn out in average kid English is higher than was expected of me in college. I got things like partial credit in math course - now its right or wrong. And we had opportunities for extra credit - our entire district has gotten rid of extra credit - or the ability to retake a test.
When I was in school, if you sat in a chair in high school for four years they gave you a diploma at the end of it - now you have to be able to pass tests - tests that require you to do Algebra I and test reading comprehension at a high school level.
And weed has gotten more intense along with school.
So, yeah, DARE might send the wrong message (DARE is really concerned about weed as a gateway drug - which it can be for a lot of kids - people don’t usually start with meth), but since weed is easily available to a lot of middle and high school kids and not getting through high school is not a good path to success - the right message isn’t weed is harmless when your brain is still developing and you have to figure out how to transform the y intercept form of a line into standard form.
Teenagers have one big responsibility in our society - to make it through school. That is really difficult to do in this day and age for an average kid if he is baked. It isn’t hard if your mother can quit her job and stay home and tutor you in Algebra, English, Science and Geography (Spanish is tough, I don’t speak Spanish so we are trying to learn it together) while supervising your sobriety, but not all of us have the luxury to be able to pull our kids from the public school system. (And teaching health - sex ed - to your own fifteen year old is lots of fun). And if you don’t pull through with that high school degree, there aren’t a lot of options for you in society.
When I was in school they flunked your ass if you didn’t pass the tests. When my parents were in school they beat you if you didn’t pass. OK maybe not but there was no grading curve and everybody was expected to pass.
About the only change I’ve seen is in the homework. The size of papers to be turned in went up in direct proportion to the ease with which they created. In college it was a major effort to go to the library and spend hours researching material for a paper that was manually typed. Manually typing a 2 page paper with no mistakes was an all day affair (including the research). When computers came into being (with the internet) the number of pages went up but not the effort to research or type them.
I went to school in Minnesota - graduating in 1984. School standards were pretty miserable. There was a lot of press about social advancement, about kids graduating who couldn’t read - and I believe it - I graduated with people who I know were still taking basic math because they still didn’t get “long division” and who had never read any story longer than 17 pages. One of my good friends was married to a woman with a high school degree who was illiterate - who graduated when I did. Illiterate, she could not read. She also couldn’t double or half a recipe (not that she could read it to start with - I discovered this when teaching her to make a cake I made - I offered to write it out, but I needed to show her. Then when I did, and I’d say “the recipe calls for this, but I like to make two layers, so I double everything” she couldn’t do it.)
I don’t know when or where you graduated, but the standards for my kids are very different than what I had. Because now, those kids don’t graduate - or not with a regular diploma.
I’m unsure what your “maybe” refers to, Little Nemo. Among the characteristics of addiction will be some combination of identifying factors. Among them are delusion, denial, withdrawal symptoms, personality changes, protecting supply and others. If these things are consistently within the control of the person who is using then, by definition, he is not an addict.
Peanuts are not an addictive substance. And, of course they don’t alter one’s brain chemistry in any significant way of which I’m aware.
An addict does “need” denial about his condition to continue using to the point of damage to his person but I question how much of that is actually willed once the addiction stage is reached.
There is simply no choice involved. That’s what addiction is.
Have I misunderstood what you are saying? If so, please try again.
If overcoming a drug addiction can be considered a moral victory, shouldn’t failing to do so be a moral failing? It seems to me that if reject the latter you must also reject the former.
1970s. You flunked you flunked. Many kids were held back. Usually by the time you got to HS you figured it out and towed the line.
Yeah, I’m the generation of meaningless degrees because you were the generation of lousy high school graduation rates. ;). Now my kids are back to “no child left behind” which is leaving a lot of them in the dirt.