ALCOHOL is the number one abused drug in High School and College Students, followed by Tobacco.
you’re right, of course. the point i am trying to make is that drugs are so prevalent that it would be basically impossible for someone to avoid them unless they had a reason to, like not destroying their life, or whatever. when i say ‘drugs’ i include alcohol and tobacco since they are, after all, drugs… and there is a reason people turn to them other than the fact that they are addictive.
also, people ABUSE drugs to escape, period. i’m not saying they use drugs to forget about their problems, i am saying that they use drugs to see their problems from a different perspective. this may work the first couple of times they use a specific drug, but once they start doing it excessively it stops working. the problem is that at that point it’s become a habit and they aren’t quite sure how to stop or they don’t want to stop. i think this is where anti-drug rhetoric comes from… past drug users who are unable to relate to what they once were because they now see the mistakes they made. too bad every generation is born ignorant, which makes general statements like ‘DRUGS ARE BAD’ ineffective.
as far as using other methods to escape from your problems… well… if it’s so easy to turn to something productive… something that will help you ‘escape’ from this mundane life then there wouldn’t anyone committing suicide. no doubt someone, somewhere, has found something that makes them happy… it’s just that that thing is different for everyone.
anyway, i just think the OP is ignorant in regards to the reason people abuse drugs. yes, it’s stupid and no one has gained anything from abusing(the different between use and abuse is very important) drugs, but that hardly makes the drug abuser any less intelligent than anyone else.
I don’t think the OP is ignorant, I think she (Malkavia, am I right you’re a “she”? If not, apologies) is young and inexperienced. Not totally inexperienced, but there are still many experiences and life events that are new to her. If I have ages right here, she and her friends are early 20’s. Me, I’m pushing 40. Experience does count in life. I’ve bumped up against “senseless death” many times. Malkavia, I don’t want to say it gets easier - it doesn’t, and who would want to get used to friends and loved ones dying? - but your perspective changes as time goes by. Some questions do not have answers, and while you always look for answers, you come to a certain acceptance that you won’t always have the answers.
I’m telling you that death always hurts those left behind. If Brandon had died doing something heroic - saving a child from a burning building, let’s say - his death would hurt just as much. The reasons it happened might be less puzzling, but the grief would be just as real and painful. And I gaurantee some jackass would be standing on the sidelines with a crass, painful remark about the circumstances, too.
Malkavia, I’m not going to say something crass like “I feel your pain”, but having buried a few of those I care about, I can say that I have traveled the same or similar road. It hurts, I know that. When my sister died it hit me so hard that for the first week I had only two goals for the day 1) get up and 2) get dressed. I didn’t always make it to #2. But time helps. Each day it becomes just a little easier to get back to routine. Mourning is not over in a few days or week. That doesn’t mean we should sit in a corner and weep for six months, either - we need to get on with our lives - but the death of a close friend or loved one can have a significant impact for months, even a year, even a lifetime. That’s why a lot of traditional cultures having mourning rituals spread out over time - weeks, months, a year. It’s not a daily observance, but a recognition that the grief process isn’t over in a week.
There’s a lot of fuss and bluster on these boards about Brandon and drugs and all sorts of stuff, and I’m concerned that maybe your real grief at the loss of a friend may be getting lost in the shuffle. The SDMB is also a place to come for comfort (although MPSIMS might be a more common forum for that than the Pit). If you need to drop in for a pat on the back and a tissue please do so. Drugs are, of course, controversial, and I’m not going to argue for stifling the verbal battles over it, but if anyone turns bully on you for missing your friend and grieving his death let me know - I’ll sharpen my tongue and whip up an extra-special Pit rant just for them
I was sorry to read about your friend, but your blanket opinion about drug users is offensive. Not all drugs are equal, in my opinion heroin is bad and pot is not. But you’ve lumped them all together in the same category. I see no mention of alcohol in there, and yet it is far more dangerous than weed. Just wanted to make that clarification, again my condolences for your loss.
Surely someone named Bongmaster has more than 4 sentences to say on this subject! 
Bongmaster’s mastery abates.
I think his point was that he’s a badass for having “done most everything”… though anybody who would call “marijuana, cocaine, LSD, ecstacy, mushrooms, even crystal meth once” ‘most everything’ has a lot to learn about the expansive world of consciousness alteration, should watch fear & loathing in las vegas a few more times, and should get their head out of their ass.
I wasn’t the OP in this particular thread and while I’m disgusted with the people who watched Brandon pass out but were too afraid/fucked up/confused/whatever to contact the authorities, I don’t believe this is because drugs are an evil, evil thing.
I’ve honestly never seen recreational drug use truly enhance someone’s existance, but this doesn’t stop me from smoking out a couple times a year, drinking a few times a month or smoking a pack a day. I fully understand that we all make choices and we suffer the consequences for those choices. Brandon made his choices and he certainly did suffer for them. My initial response was, of course, to point a finger at the drugs and the “friends” and the lifestyle and whatever else was in my field of vision. However, as the dust settles and things are starting to come into focus… I want to make it perfectly clear that I see a HUGE difference between smoking a bowl and ingesting 320mg of methadone. The OP makes a decent point though… it’s sad to watch people go through addiction and overdosing and coming down and withdrawl. It hurts to watch people you care about fighting off such impossibly large demons.
But once again, a kid dead at 21 is NOT a War on Drugs commercial. It’s a PERSON with a broken family and hurting friends. Its true, I don’t like to see his story deconstructed for the purposes of proving ones cause to be a worthy one… but I do think it’s neat that even in death, he’s got everyone thinking and discussing important issues. I think he woulda grooved on the dissention. =)
I find it offensive that the OP is using a fellow Doper’s tragic story about a friend for her own personal crusade. THAT is what I find offensive.
Fuck off, little girl.
Personally, I think weed should be decriminalized. It should be legal for medicinal purposes. And it CAN be a gateway drug, in this way:
Kids try marijuana, and realize it’s not nearly as demonic as the mainstream media and everyone else wants them to think. SO, they may conclude that it’s the same with cocaine, heroin, etc. A stretch maybe, but I don’t think they should strain their credibility. Why not just say, “Some people who smoke weed are stupid.” When I was in high school, we were just told the bad side effects (impotence, sterility, short term memory loss, impeeds growth, stuff like that).
I don’t think all drug users are stupid.
But I also knew a lot of dumbass kids in high school who used to steal the rubber cement from the art supply cabinet… Rubber cement is legal. (Although why one would WANT to huff that shit is beyond me-that stuff stinks. It gave me a headache).
I could never smoke weed-I don’t even drink except on special occassions (mostly because I’m on meds for an anxiety disorder). I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and addiction runs VERY heavy on both sides of my family. Best not to risk it.