Please don’t advocate illegal activity. It’s against the rules here.
Not my statistic.
He did not look for help. When we tried to talk to him, it was clear that we were outsiders who did not understand. He had no intention of stopping. He would not have taken help. He was being cool.
I know a lot of people who handle coke. I know a couple that coke handled them.
While I was asking the questions rhetorically, this is my point exactly: the solution (making recreational drugs illegal) is much worse than the problem (use of recreational drugs).
Oh yeah. I knew that. Let me rephrase: go somewhere where it is legal and try it there. Preferably informed and with some trustworthy friends.
By the way: are mushrooms illegal in the US?
Yes, except in Florida (sort of).
Regards,
Shodan
It’s all a matter of biochemistry.
The most dangerous drugs, heroin, cocaine, and meth are all drugs that trick your brain into thinking they’re something else. Basically, they’re synthetic serotonin (or something else). Taking it makes you feel good in unimaginable ways, because the neurotransmitters they imitate are part of the brain’s pleasure/reward system, and are only ever naturally produced in small amounts. The problems come because your brain, thinking that the insane amounts of neurotransmitters in the drugs are your new “normal,” adjusts itself over time. Soon, drugs become less and less effective as your brain gets more and more used to being flooded with pleasure transmitters.
But then, if your brain is expecting a shot of heroin’s dosage of serotonin to be normal, when you’re NOT on drugs you’re going to be way, way, way below normal. Basically, it’s like you aren’t making serotonin anymore (you are, but in amounts so low your heroin-adjust mind doesn’t even notice), which screws you up something bad. So now, instead of needing heroin to feel super good, you need it just to maintain normalcy. You’re replacing your own brain’s ability to function with some crap you have to pump into your arm. Gross.
Other drugs are different. The THC in marijuana don’t trick your brain into anything. Your brain actually has neuroreceptors designed specifically to accept cannabinoids, which are (thus far) only found in marijuana. Ponder that for a second. Your brain is designed to respond to marijuana.
Because the THC isn’t tricking your brain into thinking it’s something else, you aren’t messing with the normal operation of the brain (to the extent of using heroin to replace serotonin does). The brain and body are actually pretty good about regulating the amount of THC you can handle at once, so if you smoked an epic amount of weed, you’d get crazy-ass high but you wouldn’t overdose; anything the brain couldn’t deal with would just get stored in your body fat.
LSD is slightly different, but sort of the same. Best anybody can tell, LSD sort of flows through your brain and makes connections that aren’t normally made. It’s like if you tossed some paper clips into a giant circuit breaker. Circuits are going to get crossed that aren’t normally crossed. Suddenly your sense of taste is crossed over with your memory, and now you can taste your 3rd grade field trip to the aquarium. Things go all kinds of hinky in your mind, colors are sounds, sounds are textures, and whenever you try to think of something, you find you’re also thinking about what thinking about that feels like, and on and on.
Since that doesn’t involve replacing neurotransmitters, it’s relatively safe. I’ve got no interest in LSD so I haven’t researched it as much as marijuana, but my understanding is that it’s fairly difficult to die or become addicted to it, while it’s impossible to become chemically addicted to marijuana (certainly possible to become behaviorally addicted, like you can to cookies or sex or World of Warcraft), and almost a certainty that you’ll become addicted to Heroin.
So, my gut says to make weed and psychedelics legal, and try to keep the truly dangerous stuff locked away (like heroin), but as the OP said, case studies indicate that making everything legal works better than making some things legal.
Allegedly, the figured from Amsterdam are that, after decriminalizing marijuana, usage of marijuana went down and usage of heroin and crack went WAY down.
The first reaction (which was mine as well) to legalize the not-so-dangerous stuff and keep the dangerous stuff illegal is of course natural, but I’ve come to believe it is wrong. In fact, the most dangerous stuff is probably the most important to decriminalize.
First, let’s establish that making or keeping dangerous drugs illegal does not limit their use. There’s not a heroin addict in the world who can’t score heroin. And because of the huge profits made on it, the black market and criminals are well funded to market and distribute it. In the few cases where they have been decriminalized usage has actually dropped. Also, imprisoning people does not reduce drug use, since prisons are filled with addicts and drugs are easy to get there. In some cases easier than outside.
The two things that seem to work are prevention and rehabilitation. Neither of those needs criminalization. In fact, rehabilitation is hindered by it because people are much more reluctant to seek help for a problem that is illegal, for obvious reasons.
So not only should the most dangerous drugs be decriminalized, it’s probably more important from a public health perspective to decriminalize them than the safer drugs.
I was listening to interview with the author of the book “Righteous Dopefiend”. He said that heroin isn’t actually bad for the user’s body…in fact, it is less hard on your body than alcohol. It is the conditions in which heroin is used that make it so bad for people. Using dirty supplies, sharing needles, etc. Not to mention whatever substances the drug is cut with before it hits the streets. Decriminalizing heroin would help with the health risks associated with it. Granted, it is still not ideal to be addicted to heroin, even if it is safer, but the money saved could be used to treat the addicts.
This is exactly the same thing heroin does – heck, opiate receptors were discovered decades ago.
Your brain isn’t designed to respond to marijuana; the THC in marijuana just happens to fit into the same receptors as endogenous chemicals like anandamide and virodhamine.
All true; in fact, we already alllow heroin addicts to take methadone and buprenorphine legally, and it generally reduces criminal behavior (unless the addicts are also addicted to other drugs for which there aren’t legal substitutes available).
The USA has 25% of the entire worlds prison population costing around $22,650 per person per year. 51.8% are back in prison within 3 years of release. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world at 738 persons in prison or jail per 100,000 (as of 2005).
3.2% of all U.S. adult residents - or 1 in every 31 adults - or 2.3 million adults were incarcerated in jails or prisons.
In terms of needlessly broken lives, it’s like your very own Iraq - every year. Costs a little less though, depending how you measure ‘cost’.