Eh, I don’t think it’s that deep. I take drugs because it feels good and I have a good time, so the risks are worth it. I have zero interest maximising my lifespan at the expense of enjoyment. I’ll never understand why the general population is so hell-bent on preventing people from enjoying their own life.
There's an important distinction to be made between recreational drug use and habitual drug use, though the line can be blurry. For individuals who are predisposed to start at recreational and end up at habitual, it can be better to abstain altogether.
Alcohol and other drugs feel good and allow you to have a good time by allowing you to escape negative emotional experiences and just enjoy the moment: fear, social anxiety, trauma. Without those negative feelings, you would already feel good, and the alcohol would lose it's appeal.
You're confusing "drinking as a coping mechanism" and "drinking for recreation". You know what rich college students don't have a lot of? "fear, social anxiety, and trauma". Know what they do a lot of? booze, sex, and drugs. You show me the most content, meditation-and-philosophizing-on-a-Friday-night person, and I'll show you someone who could be having an even better time on MDMA.
Booze, sex, and drugs are just life's cheat codes for giving you more dopamine. The person with fear is the one who is so terrified of judgement by society, too betrothed to the idea that they'd be sinning to actually enjoy themselves, that they deny themselves extremely fun experiences.
I agree there is a difference between abuse that comes from trying to escape negative feelings, and occasional recreation use "for fun" which is mostly self limiting for overuse- once you develop tolerance, health symptoms, hangovers, etc. the appeal wanes.
> You know what rich college students don't have a lot of? "fear, social anxiety, and trauma".
However, I strongly disagree with this. They might even tell you they don't have these issues, but they are unconscious. Hard partying "rich college students" are largely practicing binge drinking, and it is to escape negative emotions. It's not true at all that being rich and privileged protects you from these things. A very common thing is wealthy kids having neglectful or emotionally unavailable parents, and being very afraid of being "unlovable," or being rejected. This is exactly what pushes kids to participate in degrading hazing rituals, binge drinking, drug use, and generally being afraid to enforce boundaries around their own health and well being for fear of being rejected or excluded.
Psychologists are starting to notice that wealthy children often have behavioral issues that look a lot like PTSD, despite being privileged [1]. These symptoms can look like those in refugee children, or war torn areas, and were previously seen as totally impossible with wealthy and privileged children [2]. But kids don't care how much is in their parents bank account: emotional abuse and trauma is what causes this, and wealth doesn't protect you from abuse.
A higher peak perhaps - but you can't be on MDMA 100% of the time, and taking MDMA effects that other time. Whether taking MDMA works out over the entirety of your life is a personal question - many find the high not worth it.
No, you're overthinking it. I'm perfectly happy when I'm sober - I have a nice house, a great relationship, a happy family and tons of hobbies. I am in no way crippled by fear, social anxiety or trauma.
Drinking with my friends makes me happy in different ways. Alcohol doesn't lose its appeal just because I'm happy while I'm sober.
I agree an occasional drink with friends is fun, and different from abusing alcohol to escape negative emotions.
However, I think your description of external circumstances to argue that you are happy is concerning to me. People are good at ignoring negative things and deluding themselves, and happiness is mostly an internal thing and can't be measured by external success. I don't know you, but people with low self esteem in a narcissist/co-dependent marriage, with "tons of hobbies" to help them escape would still say exactly what you are saying.
No, it’s not so simple. Alcohol changes the brain in ways that affect dopamine and endorphins. You literally feel pleasure and happiness… unless and until you’ve had too much of course
Because support costs for drug addicts have tremendous support costs for society. Prohibition was a genuine attempt at solving the problem once and for all, but for reasons that are clear now, didn't work.
That doesn’t make sense because safe, legal, educated, and controlled access to drugs reduces the burden on society. If someone’s priority is burden on society then they should be in favour of legalisation.
So it seems the opposite is in effect. People are so vehemently against drugs that they are willing to accept a higher societal burden just to push their ideology.
> legal, educated, and controlled access to drugs reduces the burden on society.
I think it does make sense from an anti-drugs point of view. Imagine a parent whose child wants to take football as a sport. You have three choices:
1. "Sure, whatever, have fun". Cheap in the short run, but expensive in the long run due to medical bills and likelihood of traumatic head injury.
2. "Okay, but only with protective equipment". Cheaper in the long run, but still requires an investment in protective measures.
3. "No, too dangerous. Do something else". Even cheaper, no investment required.
Of course this is a simplification, but I think it illustrates the point: that society would rather have no drugs at all than investing in safe and controlled access.
> society would rather have no drugs at all than investing in safe and controlled access.
But this isn’t what happens, which is my entire point. Banning drugs doesn’t result in no drugs. It results in drugs going underground where they cause greater harm to society. Prohibition doesn’t work - we figured that out almost 100 years ago. Continuing to push illegality is purely ideological at this point.
In the sense that there are certainly people who could drive safely at 120 mph but we make the speed limit 70 mph because handling outliers isn't possible in a democracy with time being zero sum.
I can't fathom why I had to scroll so far down to find a response like this.
Congratulations on your success.
The amount of posters in this thread who seem to mistake a superficial physical co-existence in a social setting for genuine connection is staggering. The Mate quote you've shared seems to address it directly, and better than I could have hoped (and tried) to articulate myself.
Maté's book "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" helped me better understand my changed life — definitely fit more with my own struggles than Hari's also-good "Chasing the Scream" [which deals more with societal legalities].
Thanks man! I just got my teeth fully-restored (implants) from all the teeth-grinding that having-been such-a-fool was. I've cried for days (teefs are so important!)... I can chew food again.
"The opposite of addiction is connection" ——Gabriel Maté
I have been "clean" from a past life for 14 years. Every day is a challenge.