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tweet by Johann Hari: The core of addiction is not wanting to be present in life, because pour life is too painful a place to be. This is why imposing more pain or punishment on a person with an addiction problem actually makes their addiction worse.
I’ve never used drugs and I hope I never will.
No caffeine, alcohol, or medicine?
Everyone uses drugs. Some are just illegal, for one reason or another. Usually (almost always) it’s political. There’s mostly nothing wrong with “drugs” but there are problems with abuse. Some drugs are also highly addictive and easily lead into abuse. We need methods in place to help people stop using drugs if they need help and better resources for preventing abuse.
Well, caffeine as in Coca Cola, but not often (more often when served than bought myself). No alcohol. Medicine, I think 99% of the time it’s Ibuprofen and that also is not often.
Abuse is one problem, yes. It’s worth mentioning though that not everyone approves even small doses of illegal drug use - no matter was it completely harmless to the user or not.
The point is people who don’t approve of any amount of illegal drug use aren’t making that decision based on logic or science. They’re making it out of an adherence to the law for its sake alone. Most people are fine with drug use to an extent, they just don’t think about it. I’m totally fine with people who have consistent rules about drug use, but I think it’s dumb when people stop thinking where the law begins.
The law is a malleable thing, and it should follow what is best practice based on science and statistics, not just what someone did because it was politically convenient. Marijuana, for example, is controlled as strongly as it is mostly because hippies were using it and it was easy to target them by targeting this drug, not because it’s particularly harmful or dangerous.
Caffeine is more unhealthy and more addictive than marijuana. So you’ve used drugs :)
I spent my college years being stupid-straight-edge, but downed enough caffeine to give me jitters every day. I ended up having to quit coffee for a year and have to moderate my intake so it doesn’t get excessive again.
A bourbon every once in a while is NOTHING compared to that for me.
