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.
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’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.
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
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 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.
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.
Being in a bad place has absolutely resulted in plenty of people turning to sex work and sleeping outside. I’ve had to do the latter completely sober.
Yeah drugs can make the situation worse, but it’s really easy to be in a financially desperate position and turn to drugs to cope with what you’re having to do to get through it.
The reality is that drug addiction, financial destitution, and homelessness are complicated and there are multiple categories of people in these positions. Drugs will often make the situation worse, and can be the incitement to the downward spiral, but for plenty the drugs are more of a symptom than a cause.
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.
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 doing using 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
Out of curiosity, what would you consider an example of circumstances where taking drugs would make someone’s life suck less (at least, from their PoV)?
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.
Those who want to control us need a boogeyman to point at, one that is NOT themselves.
Ultimately, this is the reason.
But how did the overlords drill the misconception into people’s minds so well
The “War On Drugs™”
See D.A.R.E.
Do you consider weed a drug? What about alcohol?
I consider weed a drug in the sense that it it’s a substance that affects people physically and mentally but obviously not in the street sense of the word. Yes alcohol is a drug to me.
I appreciate the consistency.
The other layer is why do some turn to drugs as their coping mechanism while others never do.
What’s giving people, in similar circumstances, better coping options/skills, or just inherent resilience, vs not?
Mostly environment and familial influence
Genetic predisposition for addiction, environmental or situational factors, tax brackets, the list goes on.
Lot easier to get drugs if you’re in an environment with easy access to them. Lot easier to get hooked if you’re predisposed to addiction. The drug of choice changes as you go up the wealth ladder.
I know I probably wouldn’t have used weed to self medicate if I didn’t have ready access to it
Can’t that be the same for other things? Drugs, violence, guns, gangs, etc.
Nobody should want to do those things with a healthy mindset.
The thing about morality is that it’s a luxury for most people. When you’re put in a position where the only way to survive is to act against your own morals, it kinda breaks all of them.
And then you rebuild your morals to fit your situation … and if you then overthink it like I did, you realise how many moral standards are just bullshit.
I don’t disagree
Listen how are we supposed to argue if you keep agreeing with me
I don’t like your tone but I accept your right to an opinion
We all have our coping mechanisms. And without any doubt some of them are healthy and most of them are bad… And some of them will actively kill you.
Drugs is in the last two categories.
Tbh I think weed is a terrible drug, killing motivation and clouds thinking - but it is a step above alcohol. And should be legal.
What we need to have a social network where nobody needs to turn to drugs, but realistically it’s not going to happen.Not necessarily a proper answer, but…
Captain Ketamine is supposedly worth over $2 trillion…
A simple explanation of a complex problem
I never saw weed as causing someone problems in their life. I would agree that life can drive some people to use drugs, but I also think that meth makes life exponentially worse.
Yes but how many meth heads do you know that randomly decided to do it one day for the hell of it? I’m sure there’s some out there but 99.9% of the time it’s going to be someone in such a bad situation that they don’t care about the long term consequences, they just want to not suffer.
I know a lot of ‘meth heads’. Most of them were prescribed Adderall as kids but as adults it became harder and harder to obtain prescriptions and they eventually turned to alternative solutions to get their medication.
Correction, “knew”, I knew a lot of meth heads. Most of them died from opiates added to their medication they didn’t know about. Fun fact: no one has ever died from a meth overdose. It’s always meth in combination with something else, usually opiates.
I mention this because there’s a stigma with meth prevalent in society and it is very unfair in my opinion. There are meth users and meth heads. A meth user is capable of living a very normal life. A meth head is created by society, mental illness, malnutrition and poverty. Just my opinion.
it’s the narrative pushed by the government, and most people are insufficiently wary of the stories they are told by the powers that be.
if people abuse drugs because of a history of generational and personal trauma at the hands of racist, capitalist, i and imperialist forces, then the obvious answer is to counter those forces. if people abuse drugs because they’re just bad people who make bad decisions as part of an immutable personal failing, it is far easier to justify criminalizing drug use, imprisoning drug users, and using them as slave labor to fuel the machine.
at least, that’s definitely what’s going on in the US.
Rugged individualism and idealism. We have long been conditioned to view these things as a personal moral failure rather than the inevitable result of social pressures. Mainly because this is more convenient for our masters.
It’s not either/or, it’s a self-reinforcing cycle, though it isn’t usually the drugs themselves that start it.
It is very useful for collecting votes, justifying increased spending, and is ultimately lucrative. A lot of political topics are like this, IRL reality is more complex and no one has a silver bullet
Mmm. Used to misdirect hate and anger towards a group of people who mostly don’t have the means to defend themselves because they’re down on their luck already. Social scapegoats.
Talking about the problems and circumstances people face which may lead to substance use (including alcohol and THC) is still stigmatised and socially taboo in the community compared to the simplistic conversation about effects of substance use.
Can you imagine if we all spoke openly about the problems and various forms of abuse, neglect and violence in the community?
I’m professionally neck deep in this, and still people turn to coping mechanisms before opening up. It’s rather sad.
