If someone is going to do it, they will. Some people pretty much have to make their own minds up about this kind of thing, IMHO. All I would say is: Remember you really are playing with fire. Coke will be the biggest test a non-addictive personality is likely to come across and for those with an addictive nature it’s serious, serious stuff.
Know thy self, dude, and if you are tempted go in with yours eyes wide open. There are too many casualties – people who thought they’d stop before they became just another sad cliché.
When cocaine was legal, it was not all that big of a deal. The soda jerks even would tip in a touch in your coca cola for a pickup. I suppose that back then they developed addicts because it eventually became illegal, but for a time one could purchase morphine over the counter too. It seems to me that the main drug they had problems with was opium, and I don’t have much knowledge of that.
It seems that opium users smoked the stuff, then fell asleep and had odd dreams and became hooked on it.
I know that most drug addictions came out of wars, where wounded soldiers got to liking the heavy duty pain killers the docs gave them to take their minds off of their mangled bodies.
From my understanding, cocaine leaves are sold freely in the Andes, because the people have been chewing them for energy for generations. They show no signs of slaughtering each other for a fix of coke.
However, I have viewed documentaries of villages where the making of the cocaine base is legal and the workers are allowed to take and use the low grade paste left over from the process. They roll it up in tobacco or other leaves and smoke it and most looked pretty miserable. One poor guy interviewed smoked a tremendous amount of coke daily and was a mess.
I suppose any drug can be used in moderation. Paregoric, an opium based – and excellent – pain killer used to be sold over the counter for years. Then the little sneaks discovered how to boil off the liquid and crystallize out the opium to smoke and now the stuff is prescription only. The same with some codeine based medications.
Drs. will prescribe you addictive drugs for various reasons, but in limited dosages and only for certain use so as not to get you hooked. Valium abuse seems to be more psychological that physical addiction, until one starts consuming high dosages.
I do know some people who avoid crack but snort a little coke now and then like others take a drink, and some who casually have used pot the same way for ages. They are somewhat rare.
You have reminded me of a lecture I watched on TV, delivered to a press gathering by Australia’s foremeost expert on ADHD.
He observed that some of the patients referred to him had a history of illegal drug use. Many of those turned out to be people who had unwittingly stumbled across the therapy that allowed them to lead a relatively normal life. Indeed, one of his clients had become the major dealer of speed in the area, just to ensure a reliable personal supply.
Invariably they would ask him as to why speed made their friends go crazy, but had the opposite effect upon themselve; why their friends would be kept awake, but they would go to sleep.
He was very happy to relieve these people of their need for criminal behaviour, just by prescribing a safe, reliable and LEGAL supply of either Ritalin or dexamphetamine.
Gee that flies in the face of my 20+ years working with convicts (of whom some 75% + were addicts, maybe 1% had ANY military experience) In addition, in the US, we had the Vietnam War (whos vets would be in their 40’s and 50’s by now) and the Gulf War in the late 80’s (who’s vets would be in their late 20’s by now), your rational would mean that we should have NO addicts in their 30’s and since there weren’t really the wholesale great numbers of wounded vets in Gulf that there were in VietNam or Korea, that we shouldn’t have very many addicts at all.
I ** do ** agree that be deomizing drugs to our youth we often make them into the aluring forbidden fruit. And obviously, at some level drug use DOES feel good. but anyone who has watched some one in the throes of addiction should have some respect for the potential damage.
No one has yet mentioned the other problems of cocain/heroin use. One, of course, is the money involved. Very few of the users can afford to spend, on even a semi regular basis, the amount it takes to get and keep high. Cocain highs are very short lived, heroin highs last a while, but you also tend to be non-productive (nodding off) for a significant period of time, so as time wasters, they’re often more efficient than Message Boards and Computer Games.
Another thing I found frightening was the folks who’d hallucinate while on coke. Scarey. Saw a woman cowering in the corner of an office, sure that there were men armed with machine guns waiting out on the street to kill her. When we looked out the window and assured her there weren’t any such people, she corrected us “They’re ** invisible **”.
Also, watching the folks that became “walking skulls” - they’d get so thin their facial bones would protrude, but thought they were “looking good”.
I admit that the pool of folks that I saw already had demonstrated a problem, but I also knew folks who’d never gotten caught get twisted around. A better place to ask that question would be an AA meeting.
Re. your logic about government drug warnings being counter productive “lies”. Forget about cooldude’s estimate he just was offering it as an observation not a peer reviewed, statistical analysis. Most of the observations offered by others are based on the observed reality that betting on one’s ability to handle highly addictive drugs is an amazingly foolish crapshoot at best. The “govmint” may lie about many things but telling you about the dangers of drugs is not among the falsehoods.
"When I was in HS, I remember a chart given to us about major illegal drugs and their effects. All of the “effects” listed were unpleasant/bad. I, and most of my friends, thought “bullshit.” If all these drugs only had bad effects, no one would use them. They had to be lying to us, which made us that much more likely to disbelieve them when they told us the real negatives to drug use."
This does sound like a lower end of the bell curve 13-14 year old brain pissed off that “the man” is telling them what to do, but based on the beginning of your post re your still being “pissed off” at the government for lying about the dangers of drug use you still believe this?! How old are you?
Tell you what. Just for edification purposes volunteer for a week or two at a local rehab clinic and talk to the real life drug users about “government lies”. It might open your eyes.
A recent study looked at stroke mortality and recovery. The after effects of strokes were much worse for coke users than for non-users, and the study didn’t differentiate between more casual and less casual users. Basically, coke use was linked to having strokes at younger ages, and the chances of the stroke being fatal jumped from 2.7% of the non-user population to 50% of the users. That, coupled with the younger ages and slower recovery, kind of point to the idea that maybe coke use is a bad idea, even in moderation.
The line you quoted said that most addictions came out of wars. That’s past tense, not present. I’m not sure, but I believe he’s referring to the America of 100-125 years ago, the period directly preceding the criminalization of opium, et al. For a time, opiate addiction was referred to as soldiers’ disease (or something to that effect).
Go to a search engine and type in the name “Gabriel Nahas.” Read the results, then come back here and say that again with a straight face if you can.
I’m alluding more to pot here than coke when I talk about Nahas. The point is that the government can and does lie about drugs and routinely sponsers bogus studies to back them up. Of course coke is dangerous and addictive as all hell. I know an addict or two and it really isn’t pretty. They’ll steal from their own mothers. Never touched the stuff myself.
I firmly believe, though, that the government should *not exaggerate the dangers of drugs. Let the truth speak for itself. Tell kids that pot is evil incarnate, and they’ll think you were lying about cocaine too. That’s not only irresponsible, it’s downright dangerous.
Of course the government lies about the dangers of drug use. Simplest example: According to the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy’s section on cannabis dependence,
As for cocaine, Merck notes a strong possibility of psychological addiction, but finds that “physical dependence has not been confirmed.” Merck goes on list the risks of cocaine abuse, including the risk of death. It also notes that the risks of cocaine abuse comes from the repetitive use of cocaine.
Now, let’s look at alcohol. Alcohol can lead to both physical and psychological addiction, and Merck notes that 10% of adult drinkers (7.5% of the adult population) “experience a problem with alcoholism or alcohol misuse at some time.” The number of potential medical problems stemming from alcohol abuse, including death, far outweighs the adverse effect of cocaine.
(all quoted material comes from The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, Seventeenth Edition (2000), section 15, Chapter 195.)
I recall the 1989 or 1990 edition of Merck Manual included a comparison chart of various substances and their potential for addiction. Both cocaine and marijuana scored well below alcohol. That edition of the Merck went so far as to state that marijuana prohibition is based on social and legal factors, not medical.
The Merck Manual is not a propaganda tome. It is a standard reference book that is likely on the bookshelf of 90% of the M.D.'s and D.O.'s in the country. In the interests of full disclosure, the Merck Manual is put out by the pharmaceutical company Merck, and is sometimes accused of having a bias in its recommended treatments of various conditions towards pharmacological therapy.
Yet, alcohol, the most commonly abused drug, and by far the more dangerous than coke or pot, is the legal drug in this country.
I guess I have to brag in order to respond to your comments. I graduated magna cum laude from that high school, and cum laude from law school. I got no honors from college, graduating with a 3.3 GPA, but that’s because I consumed a lot of (legal) alcohol. As for my current age, I am 31.
My point was the opposite from what you got out of my statement. I was saying that kids are smart. If you tell them drugs are all bad, they know you are lying because if drugs were in fact all bad, no one would use them in the first place. And once you have destroyed your credibility with kids, they are not going to believe you when you get to the legitimate dangers of alcohol and drugs.
Been there, done that, both as a volunteer and for my psych minor (all during college, 1989-90). I had further been a long time volunteer at homeless shelters (1987-1993, in D.C. and Philadelphia), where again I gained a lot of exposure to persons with drug and alcohol problems. Finally, for three years (1990-1992 (Philly), 1993-1994 (DC), I represented applicants who had been rejected for Social Security Disability Insurancea and SSI disability benefits in administrative law hearings. I don’t have my records from that job anymore, but I would estimate I represented approx. 75 alcohol or drug abusers (out of approx. 245 clients who actually went to hearings). While not directly relevant, in 1992-93, I was a residential/vocational counselor for two autistic men in a group home in Maryland.
I do not say that drugs (or alcohol) are safe. They’re not. However, the dangers presented are greatly exaggerated by the government and the press. (The fact that it is extremely difficult to obtain statistics on the actual incidence of cocaine addiction and cocaine morbidity/mortality rates is, in itself suspicious). Also, the government policy reeks of hypocrisy. With drug prohibition, it says that it is the government’s job to protect the public from a certain level of danger. At the same time, however, it allows the public to be exposed to the much greater risk of alcohol and nicotine.
Final notes, Astro: 1)I would like to point out to you that people who disagree with you aren’t necessarily stupid. 2) Before you insist that the other party in a debate gain personal experience before they have the right to take part in the debate, it might be best to set out your own bona fides. For all I know, you are a recovering addict, or you’re someone who’s never even seen cocaine. 3) I’d like to thank you for your attempted insults. Given my personal and life experiences, they were deeply amusing.
Sua
I believe the point is that you don’t use extremely addictive drugs like cocaine in moderation. It’s an addictive drug, hence you start using it more and more.
Not true, for a few reasons: 1) as I noted in my post above, it hasn’t even been confirmed that cocaine is physically addictive. 2) An addictive substance is not addictive to all persons. Again, as noted above, only 10% of drinkers succumb to alcoholism or alcohol-related problems, and alcohol is both a psychologically and physically addictive drug.
I know that I’m starting to sound like a real pro-drug nut, but I’m not. I’m very aware of the damage drugs and alcohol can do. My point is that illegal drugs, by and large, are no more or less dangerous than lots of legal drugs and legal activities. The sooner the debate is based on truth, the sooner this country can decide what to do about all of these real and potentially dangerous things, and, in particular, to deciding what is more costly, the war on drugs or legalization. Lying (or, to be fair, being captured by your own beliefs to the detriment of acknowledging the facts) benefits no one.
Sosa: I’ve heard the same thing, that cocaine isn’t physicaly addictive, but that really doesn’t matter. Whether it’s a mental addiction or a physical addiction, you still crave the substance and want to get more.
Most alcoholics have alcoholism in the family; they have a predisposition to it. I haven’t heard of a predisposition for heroin, nicotine or cocaine.
I’m so glad you found my observations regarding your tendentious nonsense “deeply amusing”. The rambling defense of your position in which you go on at length citing how mis-understood and mis-represented marijuana and cocaine are by the “guvmint” oddly does not cite a single of the government warnings that you were so exercised about in your original post.
ie
[QUOTE] Originally posted by SuaSponte *** “I’m not advocating using coke, but I am constantly pissed off that the govmint lies to us, and especially our kids about the dangers of drug use. Worse, I think it’s counterproductive.”*
My primary observation in responding to your original post was that “The “govmint” may lie about many things but telling you about the dangers of drugs is not among the falsehoods.”
The outrageous bundle of “lies” you imply (but do not cite) that government warnings are foisting upon you are not borne out by the facts as represented by the actual warnings themselves. It is quite possible that the government warnings against drug use may be slightly out of date or “thou shalt not” dictatorial in nature (like many health warnings) relative to the latest discoveries of addictive behavior but to state…
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by SuaSponte *** “If you tell them drugs are all bad, they know you are lying because if drugs were in fact all bad, no one would use them in the first place. And once you have destroyed your credibility with kids, they are not going to believe you when you get to the legitimate dangers of alcohol and drugs.” **
You are to be commended for graduating from High School (with honors) and College but only a mentally challenged person would employ this train of logic you have now cited twice as being the reason you believe government anti-drug warnings have no credibility.
Re your constant references to the fact that alcohol is much worse in overall scope as a societal drug problem than either cocaine or marijuana, no one is disputing this, especially this child of an alcoholic parent. The other issue you go on at length about, regarding the distinction of whether a drug is physically or psychologically addictive, is also beside the point if the end result is chronic addiction and the negative consequences that result.
The point at issue is whether the government messages regarding drug use being “bad period” are lying when it says illegal drugs are harmful to use as a blanket statement to children and teens, without making qualifications regarding the fact that illegal recreational drugs can, in fact, be fun and interesting to use if you are not one of the unlucky cohort that will potentially become addicted to them, and that kids would respect the government’s message so much more if this was made clear. While I can see a band of high school stoners making these arguments in defense of their lifestyle choice, that a grown man with a law degree would employ them defies belief.
Just because something isn’t PHYSICALY addictive, doesn’t mean it isn’t MENTALY addictive. Someone close to me was addicted to acid, which is not physicaly addictive.
Good God, Astro, you dolt, I did link to a government warning in my first post, the one that started this tiff. Furthermore, the link I gave in my first post IS ALSO FROM NIDA/NIH, AND GIVES THE EXACT SAME INFORMATION, WORD FOR WORD, AS THE NIH/NIDA INFOFAX YOU LINKED!! I call much of this information a lie, or at least misleading, because the “govmint” does not tell readers a) what percentage of users become addict or b) the percentages of cocaine users, casual or addicts, that suffer from any of the physical symptoms listed. This refusal prevents the public from doing an informed cost/benefit analysis.
As for your links to the marijuana pamphlets, I will point several lies or misleading information in the teen one (I couldn’t get the parent one to load):
Lie #1: the pamplet claims that marijuana has long-term negative health effects. This directly contradicts the Merck Manual, which I quoted in my last post.
Lie #2:
What this fails to note (except in one place, about one issue) is that these consequences may occur if you’re high at the time or if you are a heavy user. The failure to note that this effects may come with heavy use is particularly misleading, as marijuana is not addictive and, as the Merck Manual notes, “Cannabis can be used episodically without social or psychological dysfunction.”
Lie # 3: In answer to “why do teens smoke?”, the pamphlet mentions only peer pressure and media pressure. It omits the one kids know about already - smoking pot makes you feel good.
Strangely, you have twice now insisted that teenagers who recognize that they are being provided false information are the dumb ones, not the ones with a bit of intelligence. (Your words: “at the bottom half of the bell curve” and “a band of high school stoners.”) As for myself, I fail to see how quoting from a standard diagnostic reference manual to support my position is “rambling” and “tendentious nonsense.” FYI: I never so much as saw marijuana in HS, much less smoked it, and I was still pissed off at my teachers for lying to me. (I can’t say I wouldn’t have smoked it; I just never had the chance - I was a bit of a sheltered lad). So my teenage self neither fell into the bottom half of the bell curve nor was a HS stoner.
There is a legitimate case for cocaine and marijuana prohibition. There is also a legitimate case for marijuana and cocaine decriminalization. Once the government and people like you start being honest about the real costs of both drug use and the “war on drugs”, perhaps this country can finally figure out what’s what, and what to do about it. On my side, I can only hope that pro-legalization people stop their blather about “industrial” hemp saving the world.
Finally, your shock that a grown man with a law degree believes the medical evidence rather than government pamphlets is peculiar. I don’t know if the governor of New Mexico has a law degree or not, but he supports marijuana legalization. I don’t know if Kurt Schmoke (sp?) former mayor of Baltimore has a law degree, but he supports legalization. Once again, I remind you that people who disagree with you aren’t necessarily stupid. I have not called you stupid for your arguments, and indeed, I respect your POV. (I have called you stupid for claiming I didn’t cite to a government warning when I actually had, but heck, you deserved that one.)
Sua
I have noted that the drug threads have a tendency to raise passions to a level that leads to personal insults not tolerated in GQ. Since I have no desire to prohibit the discussion of this subject in this forum, I will ask again that everyone take things down a notch or take it to the Pit.
To SuaSponte
Re overlooking your original reference link this was my omission and I should have gone back to the original post rather than respond primarily to your follow up. I also realize that per Manhattan’s warning to both of us that my text has become both too personal and overheated in response to your post(s) and for this I apologize.
In any case for the purposes of this discussion I will accept your contention that, for you, the general government message is un-persuasive insofar as it, among other things, does not give detailed statistics of rates of addiction and percentages suffering from the “physical symptoms” but bases it’s message on the broader note that using these potentially dangerous, addictive substances is a “bad” idea in general.
Regarding your citation of “lies” # 1 and #2 (ie: “the pamphlet claims that marijuana has long-term negative health effects. This directly contradicts the Merck Manual, which I quoted in my last post”).
With all due respect to the Merck Manual’s citing little effect for non-episodic use the same thing could be said for any number of stupid and dangerous behaviors. Current studies are finding significant negative health consequences as a result of long term marijuana use. See http://www.health.org/reality/research/ Regarding the distinction of occasional versus chronic use in this context needing to be cited in governmental warnings for them to be valid, I think sort of misses the point. Starting to smoke marijuana is a bad idea for a number of perfectly valid reasons. Re the occasional/ chronic distinction if you don’t start in the first place the risk of the chronic use dangers are a non-issue.
In a larger and more general context both occasional and long term users under the influence of marijuana have impaired motor and cognitive functions and occasionally tend to do stupid and dangerous things (especially young people) that they otherwise might not and can endanger other innocent bystanders in the process. There is also the undisputed fact that marijuana is an introductory gateway drug to a number of harder and more dangerous drugs. Whether 1%, 10% or 100% of the non-episodic users of marijuana become chronic users, subject to the health risks cited above, is beside the point. It’s a stupid and dangerous risk to take and the option of an individual being able to do an “informed cost/benefit analysis” on these risks should not (IMO) be offered by a responsible government any more than a policeman should let a slightly drunk driver go on his merry way if he’s “feelin’ lucky” and his chances of killing himself or others is only a statistical fraction.
Regarding “lie” # 3 which you cite as the government’s not explicitly acknowledging the fact that marijuana can induce a relaxed, semi-euphoric state of mind and this is why it’s so groovy is really (IMO) a self evident point that the government does not need to elaborate on and does little to reduce the veracity of the general message that using marijuana, even occasionally, is a stupid and risky thing to do.
As far as Schmoke and the Governor of New Mexico go I don’t think they are making their arguments out of some libertarian impulse but out of frustration with the limitations and failures of the current drug policies and are casting about for alternative models to attack the problem. I don’t think legalization is the answer as the bitter experience of the failed Dutch experiments have shown, nor do I think the government changing their anti-marijuana message from a general “it’s bad” to a detailed and complex parsing of the cost benefit risks will make a difference either. Some people, perhaps even most people, may be able to use marijuana and cocaine “non-episodically” for fun and entertainment but there is a significant cohort of citizens for whom indulging in these substances will assist in destroying their lives. The American electorate have currently put in place a government that has made the determination that the costs outweigh the benefits of legalizing drugs. If others think this policy is incorrect get the votes and change the system.
