The alcohol generalisation is patently false. I very rarely drink alcohol and when I do, I never have more than 3 beers, at most. So much for my lack of inhibition against further drinking. All drugs have a threshold beyond which increased dosage has negligible effect on intoxication and generally only an increase in undesirable side-effects. Also, depending on the circumstances and the drug, people consciously wish to avoid greater intoxication, to maintain a comfort zone, so to speak. The drug-naive experimenter, obviously can’t make that decision, with certainty. They don’t know firsthand what further consumption might bring. But with experience and/or guidance, limits and comfort zones are recognized.
I have to be frank. Your impressions of drugs seem strongly shaped by anti-drug propaganda. In earlier discussions, I think I recommended this book to you. See if you can get hold of it. You don’t have to agree with it. Just read it and see.
Wait, what? What the hell point are you making here? Do you really get drug information from the drivers’ ed manual you used in high school? Christ, you grow more and more incomprehensible as time goes past, and your sources get weirder and weirder. What kind of person buys and reads several editions of a driver’s ed textbook?
Seriously, do you understand the difference between sources like driver’s ed textbooks (which are not, as far as I know, generally written by addiction medicine specialists), old episodes of Dragnet (ditto), and lectures your parents gave you forty years ago? Are you aware that new research and writing has been done within the past forty years? Can you understand the difference between propaganda and discussion? Because everything you cite here is impossible to verify paraphrases of things that happened long before I was born.
At any rate, yes, it’s true: the first sip of wine and within minutes I’m drinking nail polish remover just to get a little drunker! You’ve clearly proven your point. The tiniest indulgence inevitably leads to the horrors of addiction and death.
Seriously, though. Joke books? Driver’s ed textbooks? Dude, it’s time to get a library card, or subscribe to a magazine, or something. Because this is bizarre.
FYI, I have patronized several libraries, including the large systems of Los Angeles City and Los Angeles County, as well as Torrance, Redondo Beach, Inglewood, Long Beach, and Santa Monica, all of which have issued me cards.
My primary source of information for my appraisal of excessive drinking, incidentally, was not Sportsmanlike Driving or any other text. It was the firsthand experience I had with my father, my stepfather, an uncle, and a brother-in-law (it was clear to me as time passed that he was not good enough for my sister–and she was convinced of that too after he drank so much he vomited.)
So I know whereof I speak when I talk or write about the potential danger–“Sneak Attack,” if you will–of alcohol.
And I apply this conclusion to illicit drugs as well, having no interest in tempting fate for the sake of a “buzz.”
As for several editions of the Drivers’ Ed book, the first one I bought was the old edition that was retired about the time I was a high-school freshman. I often shop at used-book stores, for a variety of books; I later found the edition that had been used at Redondo High when I took the course–interestingly enough, a teacher’s manual! The other two editions I bought had been used in high school years after I graduated.
Oh–and of course any information against drugs is propaganda.*:rolleyes:
“I’m firm, you’re obstinate, he’s a pig-headed fool.”–Ambrose Bierce
No one has said that. However, the sources you’ve cited basically are propaganda. If you want credible information about the pros and cons of various drugs, try something written in the past couple decades by someone in the medical field.
Well, I have an appointment with a physician Tuesday morning; I’ll ask him.
Perhaps this is a topic to research via “Ask Jeeves” or the Readers’ Guide.
I did take this up with the doctor. He did specifically say that marijuana does not haVe the potential for addiction, and he did not consider LSD addictive, either.
That said, well, call me over-cautious, but I still say “no” to drugs, as well as to alcohol and tobacco, regardless of the millions of people who drink down and light up and suffer no apparent ill effects. (My maternal grandfather drank beer and smoked cigarettes until he was well into his nineties, but his son-in-law, my Dad, who also drank and smoked plenty, died at 66 from “multiple organ failure” (according to the death certificate).
