Would say it's safe to say someone that doesn't want to interact with people that willfully and regularly poison themselves for kicks isn't quite what I'd call an asshole move, though. Some people can deal with the sorts of personalities that do that, some can't. Wanting to avoid that interaction is a mostly neutral thing, I'd say.
Wanting to avoid that interaction is basically the equivalent of willingly confining yourself to a remote religious order. People do drugs. You get a good, professional job, you'll be working with them, 99% of the time. Someone will drink, or smoke whatever. And I'm sorry, but refusing to interact with them over something that doesn't affect you in the slightest is hands down dickery.
I would be careful. This is dangerous territory to tread upon, my friend. Crick of Watson and Crick was supposedly doing acid when he realized DNA was a helix, but that's as much as I can say on this.
Scientific evidence is dangerous territory? And make no mistake, the evidence is a bout as strong as evidence can be given the time period period they had to work with before the hammer came down and made further research illegal. The results probably weren't for things you've heard of, I never heard about the DNA thing, but they were nontrivial problems, and all 22 participants had been at work trying to solve them for at least four months time. I do believe the dosage was significantly less than you'd find among recreational users, though. Regardless, the study is out there, you can in fact look it up.
I don't use drugs for many reasons. Chief among them is "God said so". The purpose of my life is to live worthy to be in His presence. As a corollary, I'm banking that I'll get more righteous and wise as I grow older, so having a long life is to my benefit. Nevertheless, on some great alarm clock in the sky is my name (in a metaphorical sense 
), so unless I kill myself, there's a day, hour, and minute ascribed to my death. Now I just have to avoid killing myself, hence, another reason not to do drug.
Oddly enough, I've known a great number of religious people to seek out drugs to become closer to god. Hell, this is where most of our modern hallucinogenics came from - they weren't used recreationally, they were used transcendentally. That's pretty much the whole reason Peyote is a thing, for example.
I meant an Advil when I had a cold.
So how did it feel to use drugs to feel better than you would have naturally? Did you find it revolting? Immoral? Because I'm not really seeing the difference between this behaviour and someone smoking a joint to relieve their glaucoma or stop freaking out after a stressful week of high-stress labour. Knowing that you've used drugs - would you find it acceptable for another person to shun you because of it? Would you find it rude if they cut of all association with you after it came out?
So I'd like to think I'm in a good position to plan what I'd like to do in the future, and getting involved in heavy drug use would be, well, a bit difficult.
So don't get involved in heavy drug use. I know plenty of people who stay mostly clean. Hell, I was super straightedge (to the point of, yes, even avoiding painkillers and caffeine) for a good nine years. I've got no problem with you avoiding stuff for whatever reasons you have.
And the assumption that "everyone has been involved in drug use" is just depressing. I'd like to think that lots of the people not posting in this thread haven't, or that plenty of the people I pass by on the street haven't, or that as a civilization we've produced at least a few individuals who died without doing drugs.
Ignoring the fact that our bodies naturally produce drugs (say hello to adrenaline junkies), ignoring that, you're right. There's probably a few. At least the babies, right? Not many, of course - our society is not only built on drug use, but drugs have been a central component of almost every culture on earth for thousands of years, at least. Modern society has only made their distribution, manufacturability, and benefits even more impressive. Over 90% of the US population over 21 consumes drugs
for recreational purposes at some point in their life. 99.9% have consumed them for other reasons, and I'd assume a good portion of those consumed them for reasons other than medical necessity. More than a third of the US population has consumed illegal drugs. I'm pretty sure the remaining .1% is mostly Christian Scientists or something. That one's just idle speculation, though, the other's numbers can actually be supported.
And I'd also like to say that, if I'm going to live a perpetually lonely life because I don't like to talk to drug users, where's the actual facts behind this? I'm going to go out on a limb here (watch out!), and say that you use some sort of substance, hence the depressing predictions.
I use Li+ and Bupropion, yes. For the sole purpose of altering my mental state and making me feel better than I would naturally. I also have the occassional glass of wine, although I really shouldn't be combining those. And I think avoiding interacting with me, based solely on those conditions, which no one even needs to know about except for, perhaps, the person(s) I have a glass of wine with, is what's depressing. It's judgmental, irrational, and fairly rude.
And let's go even further and say that some of your friends do the same, because like it or not, people organize themselves into little groups depending on shared interests, professions, hobbies, and anything else you can think of for their entire lives. So now you have a reference point surrounded by drug users.
Of my close friends - one does no drugs at all beyond caffeine and medically necessary ones. Doesn't even take painkillers unless the pain is preventing him from working. Amazing guy, and everybody loves a designated driver, and still good fun at parties. The next drinks and smokes pot, though he doesn't do the second when I'm around, and I don't think I've ever actually seen him high. Probably tried other stuff, I don't know. The third will have a single glass of alcohol, like, once a month, and a daily coffee, and that's it. Tops. This is my circle of friends. I guess one could argue that I'm surrounded by drug users, but none of it is abnormal. If anything, my friends are significantly more straight-edge than society as a whole when you add me into the mix. But I
associate with people that do more than this - I have a group of engineers I run with sometimes, I think some have done pot. I've got a number of actors and musicians I hang with occassionally, and they pretty much span the spectrum.
You see, I live in the real world, where part of every day life is talking with and interacting with and working with a lot of different groups of people. People organize themselves into groups based on all those things, yes, but people also tend to be part of more than one group, and I've never seen a group organized based solely on people who meet all matching criterion. And unless your a heavy drug user or a recreational drinker, and they are too, it's not even likely to be something that comes up when those organizations happen. A great many people keep it to themselves.
Could it be that this is a bad place to make guesses about the habits of society of a whole? Could it be that if I get a good education, a decent job, and eventually a nice place to retire (doubly easy, of course, since I won't have met anyone to get married to) then I'll have passed the Gauntlet of Life without getting involved in anything related to drugs? And yes, you can say that I won't get a good education or a job, and I'm lying to myself, but the problem here is that even if I'm a terrible judge of myself, I still know more about me than you do, and I think I'm doing pretty damned well.
If your goal is to avoid interaction with drug users, I think I can pretty comfortably say you aren't going to get a good education or a decent job. Feel free to prove me wrong, of course! (Just make sure to ask everyone you meet first, just to be sure!)
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Topic: Drug Discussion (Read 12882 times)