[__MatrixMan__]

Different drugs are different. Lumping them all together is dangerous:

- Kids who discover that one wasn't a big deal will then be motivated to try others and see what else they were lied to about (I did, got around to most of my checklist too).

- Taboo about drugs in general prevents harm-mitigating conversations from happening that might protect someone from one specific drug or another (I turned out ok because of conversations like that).

[hyperadvanced]

I really really really don’t like the “ideas are harmful” bent of your comment. Saying “drugs are bad” doesn’t harm anyone, even if you disagree, or think that it’s reductive or off base (because it is). Kids who grow up in homes where “harm mitigation” include sanctioned marijuana and alcohol use have worse outcomes than those who don’t.

[__MatrixMan__]

Harm mitigation isn't about sanctioning anything, it's just about recognizing that sometimes prohibition doesn't work and not making things worse in those cases.

It's about not wrecking somebody's teeth by confiscating their pacifier while they're rolling. It's about not causing overdoses by limiting access to milligram scales (because trying to use a kitchen scale to measure a dose is dangerous). It's about creating an environment where people won't lie to you if you express concern about their habits.

Most drug problems are poor dopamine hygiene or mental health issues of some other kind. Let's focus on that instead of celebrating that somebody is "off the hard stuff" while the root cause remains and wrecks their life through a video game addiction.

If you're not seeing the harms caused by overbroad vilification of drugs in general it's because the people around you who are struggling with a substance problem are hiding it from you due to your attitude about such things. And if they're hiding from you, you can't help them.

[hyperadvanced]

I think you’re projecting a lot of things that onto me based on the one or two sentences I posted above. To clarify - I do drugs regularly (though I’m avoiding anything powdered until this fentanyl thing blows over), I have lost friends to drug overdoses, I have had friends choose to hide or open up about their problems to me (for whatever reason, people like to keep things a secret when it’s not going well, drugs or not), I live in a place where drugs have been decriminalized and recriminalized and I’m still nominally for decriminalizing them (mostly because I’m an accerationist). People die from taking drugs, they don’t die from video games or from not being handled with enough psychological care when it comes to harms reduction messaging. I was simply commenting that I don’t like the “dangerous ideas” thing and think that it’s very disingenuous to call verbal inclinations dangerous in comparison to methamphetamine or LSD (both of those are fun and dangerous). Different sports leagues, not ballparks.

Hard drugs are dangerous and I’ve seen a lot of people get burnt thinking they can abuse them freely. From time to time I burn myself as well, but have a penchant for stove touching, probably related to the accelerationism thing.

[__MatrixMan__]

You're right, I apologize for being needlessly aggressive about it. I'm just watching my family make my cousin into a pariah over drug use that isn't even happening (not yet at least). They just need to have an enemy at all times... and maybe I pointed some of that frustration at you.

[hyperadvanced]

It’s ok, it’s easy to imagine who you’re talking to online in the worst light, or to externalize your frustrations with others beliefs onto other people.

I have a lot in common with your cousin: I had long hair, I skated, I had “out there” beliefs that my family encouraged or at least tolerated. My community typecast me as a pot smoker or a punk or a hippie, when the time came to it, I was like “hell yeah I’m gonna get high, everyone already thinks that I do anyway!” Unfortunately that set me down a bad path, and I’ve been insanely lucky and dodged a lot of bullets that could have severely fucked my life up.

For what it’s worth, my parents did a great job of saying “we will absolutely not tolerate you doing drugs, but we will give you the freedom to do your thing, and when you fuck up, we will ground your ass into oblivion.” I think that having that as a threat gave younger me a lot of good reasons to think about what I was doing and to do it in a more responsible way than some of my friends whose parents were more hands off with things.