I was never heavy into drugs but I smoked weed a fair bit in my 20s, knew a lot of other daily users of weed as well as some harder drugs. I don’t think I ever came across a person that randomly decided to do drugs for no reason one day and got hooked. They were all people who had pretty messed up problems in their life that were too complex for them to fix on their own.
So it confuses me when people instantly assume that someone is in a bad situation due to drugs rather than them using drugs to deal with a bad situation. And yes I know drug abuse makes problems worse the vast majority of the time but it’s not what I see as the root issue in a lot of cases, the drug use is a symptom/coping mechanism for people that society have let fall through the cracks.
It also depends what drugs we’re talking about.
There are definitely drugs much more likely to cause problems, even if you didn’t have any in the first place. And not everybody who runs into problems with drugs used them to cope with problems they had. Careless recreational use can lead to addiction all the same. Especially when the drug can create a physical dependecy, like alcohol or heroin do.
But it’s also a lot easier to blame drugs than to pin down societal problems that might lead people to problematic drug use.
The pod " cool people who did cool stuff" with Margaret killjoy did a series on safe use sites and the “drug user liberation front” recently. Definitely worth a listen if youre into this subject.
Because you live in Usonia.
This certainly isn’t the case with my country,
the Netherlands, where the problem is considered one of regulation
or with China, where the problem is considered one of national security and imperialism.I live where?
Easier and cheaper to actually do something about them.
If drought hits your country would you rather people focus on bringing water to the plants (lack of water is a visible, tangible, actionable cause of the problem) or start a meteorology department and wait for rain (because weather is the one that caused drought).
To make people not turn to drugs you need to provide them with a life worth living without drugs. I’m not talking utopian living. You want to turn people away from drugs? People who have their own house/flat, work less than 60 hours a week, have money to spend on hobbies after necessities like food or clothing, and have places to do those hobbies in. Those people do not turn to drugs. But those people aren’t obedient workers constantly stressed about chasing the goals of their employer. Those people aren’t exhausted sheep voting along party lines because they have no time or energy to research political topic themselves. If you are the government, you do not want those people existing at all.
As for marijuana - marijuana stalks can be turned into plastic-like but eventually biodegradable substance. So the reason marijuana was so demonized had nothing to do with drugs, but everything to do with it competing with plastic.
Hemp as fabric material was everywhere before the victory march of fossils. But is it really as good as plastic?
For modern use of plastics? Not really, we found even better plants to replace plastic and there are several startups in Asia, Africa and South America that use them.
For use of plastics at the time? Marijuana hemp only “downside” was being bio-degradable. The idea that your trash bag will outlive you was considered great back then.
Plastic industry is probably the most scam-infested one in the history of mankind. Even considering modern predatory tactics like gambling for kids. Do you know that when international community decided to use triangle made of arrows as a symbol for “recyclable product”, plastic companies lobbied for the same symbol to also mean “plastic” no matter if it’s recyclable or not? This is why every plastic nowadays has the “recyclable” symbol with number inside, number indicates type of plastic and only one or two of about ten types of plastic is really recyclable.
I’ve known people who has done drugs just because “party fun” and ended up hooked.
There are plenty of people out there. Some would have take on drugs because their lives where miserable, or even as a form of anesthesic, but other just because they were fun (at the beginning)
One of the most used drugs, tobacco, people start smoking “just because it’s cool”, and end up hooked for life. Never underestimate how addictive are drugs and how social pressure or just social behavior could make someone try a substance.
First order effects easy to see, seconf order causes harder to see
In addition to propaganda campaigns? It’s the same reason people try to shift the blame for most societal issues (financial, health, relationships) to a failure of personal responsibility.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pulling-through/202505/why-we-blame-the-sick
It’s a comforting lie people tell themselves because it gives them a false sense of control. Honestly, kind of the same reason people start doing drugs.
Drugs or other habits can help people cope when they can’t keep believing a comforting lie, but also feel driven to their breaking point by too much reality/need to find a way to escape from the pressure.
Because the problem is them sniffing leaded gas, instead of fresh air.
They should have just been born in 2000’s.
To answer your question, because they’ve never done drugs. people who blame the problem you describe solely on drugs don’t know anything about drugs, except that they’re scary and they hurt you.
It’s an easy, comforting answer.
“That person’s life sucks because they do drugs” doesn’t raise any uncomfortable questions, and it makes avoiding a similar situation seem easy. “That person is using drugs because their life sucks” leads us to ask why their life sucks and whether the same thing could happen to us.
That’s a deep answer. Kinda like fundamental attribution error.
It is exactly fundamental attribution error, with a bit of motivated reasoning.
I guess a lot of people who haven’t gone through some serious shit in their life really do find it difficult to accept how bad some people have it
It takes the “fate” out and puts in a level of control. Well your life is crappy because you do x, I don’t do x so I’m safe.
Amplification - drugs /can/ turn a small problem into a huge one.
Plus sometimes people do start drugs for temporary or even trivial reasons - boredom, curiosity, peer pressure, even just availability - they don’t always need to be escaping something.
When they say drugs ruin lives, it’s a truism often enough to be accurate.
Because fixing the PROBLEMS means the people in charge lose money to build functional, supportive social structures.
Much easier to throw victims in jail and monetize their “treatment” by privatizing poor people’s tax dollars.
The problems causing drug abuse reflects on the speaker’s treatment of people and the people close to them, it makes them responsible for the fallout of their actions or lack of action.
Blaming the user absolves themselves of any responsibility.
You can apply that to pretty much any social ills, like poverty, homelessness, etc.
IOW, the person blaming the user: may have abused the user in some way as a kid, voted to end substance abuse education in schools, voted to end afterschool programs that might’ve kept kids away from abusive situations or drugs in the house, voted to limit or end food programs that would have allowed people to not become completely destitute and take to drugs for escape, and so on.
A simple explanation of a complex problem
The drugs mess up your brain chemistry. Yes, they were in a bad place and did drugs. Being in a bad place didn’t make them engage in prostitution, break into cars, share needles, sleep outside, not brushing their teeth, not shower, etc. The drugs did that, and the drugs will keep them in that state until they hit rock bottom or die. You are correct that economic blight causes drug addiction, but drug addiction causes peoples’ lives to get so much worse.
I’m in no way saying drugs will fix problems (majority of the time), I’m saying drug abuse should be treated as a symptom and not a cause
It’s both, but you can’t address the mental health and economic circumstances until the person gets clean. They’re not mentally able while they’re on drugs.
I think not addressing the mental health and economic substances until they are “clean”, will make it a lot harder for them to get clean
I don’t understand why we need to pick one or the other when thorough and holistic interventions would work a lot better
I agree with your overall point, this is more of a nitpick on the wording
I agree with you. I had a drinking problem. I tried AA and other methods to stop drinking and they never even came close to helping. One day I discovered that for me, alcohol and opiates did not mix and made me violently ill without fail.
Using that to my advantage, I became addicted to opiates, knowing I couldn’t drink while on them. It broke my mental addiction to alcohol a few months after the physical addiction was gone. Breaking the mental addiction was the critical part. Once I knew I no longer wanted to drink, I knew it no longer had control over me.
Breaking the opiate addiction afterwards was easy because I never really wanted to do it in the first place. I never had the mental addiction. I just drank until the opiate physical addiction was gone, then stopped drinking because I already didn’t want to, it was only a tool being used.
I don’t recommend anyone try this method though. It very likely will kill anyone who attempts it. I wanted to share because for me, it confirms what you said, forcing an addict to get ‘clean’ will only make it harder for them to do so. In my opinion.
Because if you give them money, they’re going to spend it on drugs. If you give them an apartment, they’re going to destroy it and not care, because they’re on drugs. I understand it’d be “nice” if addiction treatment wasn’t hard, but it is.
I agree, but I meant that both interventions need to happen at the same time since having regular contact with support and being able to rely on them (instead of drugs) while getting clean will make it more likely that they succeed.
I feel like we might be pushing for the same point, and are talking about different sides of it
If you give them money and they spend it on drugs, maybe it’s because they still did not have enough money to believe they could live a normal life.
If they destroy an apartment given to them, maybe that apartment was cheaply made and not fit for humans in the first place. Maybe if it were worth caring about, they would care about it.
Mental health treatment ≠ addiction treatment
An addict is more likely to stop being an addict once their normal human needs are fulfilled.
A mentally ill person does not stop being mentally ill, unless a cure exists. Their symptoms can be mitigated or reduced at best.
Pay attention to my use of the words “maybe” and “more likely”, these are not absolutes and that’s most of my issue with your comment. If you give SOME of them money, they’ll spend it on drugs. If you give Some of them an apartment, they will destroy it. Others however, might spend that money on an apartment and nice clothes to interview for jobs with.
These are all just my opinions. I am someone who has destroyed apartments, spent money inappropriately on drugs and alcohol, and did not care about anything for a decade unless it modified my state of consciousness. It took love and patience from a couple people and it wasn’t easy for them. It took a couple years and wasn’t cheap, but I think it worked and I am lucky to have those people make the effort. I believe it’s a solution that should be attempted more. Giving someone money or an apartment is a short term fix that ignores the problems. Giving someone love and patience is a long term solution that difficult but has better odds the longer it is done. There’s always exceptions though, some people are just fucked.
I’m not advocating for self medication but I’m saying there are legitimate uses for drugs, especially with mental health problems. Hell even ketamine, mushrooms, and LSD are accepted forms of therapy in this day and age.
Oh do fuck off with your holier than thou outlook.
Signed: someone who was in that position, married to someone else who was in that position.
Thank you for a sane take. So many people online seem to not understand the reality of things like drug addiction, alcoholism, homelessness, etc. None of these are quick fixes and all of these spiral into one another.
