Thoughts about ``recreational'' drug users and society

Incomplete

The fundamental use of ``recreational'' drugs is often described as a temporary escape from reality or a ``way to help you to relax a bit'', and it is often asserted (perhaps most often by young nicotine users) that it's under their control and they could give it up at any time if they wanted to.

My impression is that the fundamental use is to avoid facing up to, and acting to deal with, one's own responsibilities and problems, and that once someone has found a way to feel OK without going to the effort of solving the problems that were stopping them feeling OK, unless they are very strong on self-control (in which case they wouldn't have tried such a short-cut anyway) they will never again want to do it the hard way.

Being heavy on responsibility myself, I'm unhappy at seeing people arrange to feel happy while leaving their problems unsolved if that pushes the problems onto someone else to solve... perhaps an articulate, early-stage, drug user would argue that they only ever use the drug as a temporary escape so they can build up their strength to tackle the problem when they've finished the fix... and there is probably some truth in this... you may have seen smokers having a smoke in preparation for some task the look of which they do not like.

how about facing people with the decision, and providing drugs if they are prepared to declare themselves as not wanting to take on their own responsibilities?

Having done this, they would then be able to use them to cope with anything they don't like; if they don't like being dropped by society, they can just take some more tablets until they don't mind...

what about prescription psychiatric drugs?

what about alcohol?

what about about non-chemical shortcuts to happiness?

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For other essays, see the index to this collection; and for some other thoughts, my thoughts index.

Last modified: Sun Jun 10 22:28:51 GMT Daylight Time 2007