posted
First, a starting point. This topic is about whether it is ok to use drugs, not whether it is ok to steal to support your drug habit, drive stoned, beat your wife and kids because you are a drunk, sell your body for crack, or any other peripheral issue that is not solely concerned with drug use. Arguments such as, "All junkies steal to support their habit," are irrelevant to my questions. Our hypothetical user is non-violent, pays for his drugs with money he earned legally, never drives intoxicated, always uses a trip sitter when trying out new substances, does not break any non-drug related law, helps old ladies across the street, and is generally an upstanding citizen in every way... unless you think using drugs is wrong. Also, his dealer IDs and does not sell to anyone under the age of 18, in case anyone sees a difference between kids and adults using. His dealer is also an upstanding citizen, who used some of the profits from his business to build a free Internet cafe in the inner city to help the disadvantaged, is faithful to his wife, and has two lovely children who make straight A's. So our user's drug money is not supporting anything immoral... unless you think that providing adults access to drugs for a fee is wrong. (Or if it is the fee that bothers you then he gives them away for free.)
Is there something fundamentally wrong with intentionally altering one's state of mind, perception, or thought processes? (Drugs, meditation, etc.) Is there something fundamentally wrong with doing so through foreign substances? (Organic and/or inorganic compounds, such as THC, MDMA, N2O, etc.) What if these substances have another use, or are even necessary to live? (DXM, amphetamine; oxygen, water.) What if these substances are found naturally in the human body? (GHB and DMT are the ones I know of.) What about through non-chemical means? (Television, Internet, laser light show, religious worship, etc.) Why or why not?
Is it all or nothing? Is it fine for Native Americans to use peyote in their religious ceremonies, but not fine for me to take mescaline because I want to enjoy myself? Is it ok to use cannabis and opium, but not tobacco, alcohol, or caffeine? Is it ok to drink heavily on the weekends as long as you never miss work or school? Is smoking a joint after you get home from work or school wrong? What about frequency of use? Is using crack once worse (morally) than using MDMA every other weekend for a year? Is using MDMA four times a year worse than being permastoned? Is it fine to be constantly stoned on marijuana, but not morphine?
Is there anything fundamentally wrong with smoking pot every day of your life because you enjoy it? Is there anything fundamentally wrong with smoking pot every day of your life to self-medicate depression? What if a psychiatrist or other qualified professional with a California practice prescribes it to you, can you smoke pot all the time then? Is it wrong to take prescription SSRIs for the rest of your life? Prescription MAOIs? Non-prescription SSRIs or MAOIs? (DXM is probably an SSRI, and St. John's Wort is an MAOI) MAOIs that have psychedelic properties? (AMT) MDMA was (and still is if you believe everything you read) in psychotherapy before it was made illegal. Is it wrong for a therapist or counselor to give MDMA to a willing client, with the sole and sincere goal and expectation of aiding the client by temporarily breaking down emotional barriers?
My evil twin has tried several different opioids. He has used them enough (although not with any regularity) to know what the high is like. When he got my wisdom teeth taken out, they gave him an IV of fentanyl and diazepam (Valium). (He has also tried alprazolam (Xanax), a drug similar to diazepam, so he knew what that felt like as well.) That was the most stoned he has ever been in his life. It lasted for hours. Certainly he enjoyed that experience, and if he had the money hee might do it again... but it was for a legitimate medical purpose. He was high, so let us have none of the Rush Limbaugh "It was for pain" bullshit. Was it wrong for him to have that IV for pain relief? Was it wrong for him to enjoy it? If yes, why? If no, would it be wrong for him to take the same combination again, for no medical reason?
Is it wrong to take drugs alone? Personally, I feel that some drugs (MDMA) should be taken alone the first time or two you try them out. Social drinking in my peer group has gotten entirely out of hand. They get shitty drunk, obnoxious, and the more detestable keep trying to give naive high school/college girls date rape drugs... or mixed drinks if you want to call it that. The more tolerable sink into a fugue state. Yes, there are a few people who are fun even when drunk, but not many. Smoking pot can also be a very social activity, but some people just ruin it for everyone. Besides, if you are doing anything besides pot the logistics become a nightmare for people who refuse to drive over a certain level of impairment. ("I'm fine to drive; I've only had 8 beers in three hours and I can't even feel it yet." Idiot.) As far as I am concerned, anyone who first tries MDMA at a rave is a fool. It is too easy for an inexperienced person to be manipulated in ways they will regret the next morning anyway, why on earth would someone take it when they know they will be around hundreds of unknown people with unknown agendas is beyond me.
Well, those are all the questions I can think of right now. I am not asking whether drugs should be legal, because I have heard most or all the arguments on both sides of that question. All I want to know is why or why not intentional self-intoxication via any substance is right, wrong, or morally neutral, and any specifics. Also, while I realize that for some it may be a religious reason only, that is irrelevant to non-members of your faith. So I guess try to keep the reasons as secular as possible.
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posted
One more thing. Many drugs have different slang names in different regions, so to help everyone keep it straight I think it would be good if we could try to refer to the less ubiquitous drugs by their chemical names if at all possible. However, because plants rarely contain only one psychoactive chemical, it makes as much sense to use the name for the plant rather than the name of the major chemical found in the drug.
Marijuana / Cannabis / Weed / Pot / THC Opium / Codeine and Morphine Tobacco / Nicotine Peyote / Mescaline and other alkaloids Ecstasy* / MDMA Cocaine (HCl salt I think) / Crack (Cocaine Freebase) Edit: mushrooms and the **, but not the *. Psilocybin Mushrooms / Psilocybin (psilocin)** and other alkaloids Fly Agaric / Amanitas mushrooms/ Ibotenic acid, Muscimol
*This is the main reason I thought of this. Often, what is sold as ecstasy may not contain actual MDMA. Therefore, I usually say MDMA unless I am referring to a specific pill (or powder) with untested contents. MDMA is always ecstasy, but ecstasy could be MDMA, MDE, MDA, PMA, DXM, caffeine, ephedrine, nothing at all, or some combination. Also, MDMA is shorter to type.
**Psilocybin breaks down into psilocin in the body. Basically, they are the same drug, although by mass psilocin is more potent.
posted
Individually, taking drugs is not moral/immoral IMHO because I don't believe in the sanctity of a drug-free body. To some extent, I believe in the sanctity of an unharmed body, so drugs that cause physical or mental damage could be considered "unethical." But I also believe in personal sovereignty, which would allow someone of sound mind to make such a decision on their own.
Where the problem lies, and why a drug conversation must eventually detour into the realm of legality, is whether society can handle a drug being legal. Somehow there is an equation of the overall benefits of Drug A compared to the detriments to society as a whole. This takes into account all sorts of parameters, including the addicting effects, the long-term effects, and the cost on the health care system. Sometimes we make an incorrect decision (lots of times) and pursue the wrong drug while allowing another drug to be legal. The ability of a capitalist economy to abuse the drug trade is very high.
In the ideal world, drugs would be legal as everyone would understand the effects and only participate if willing to deal with any problems that would arise. In the real world, these problems seep into the framework of society and affect the human population as a whole.
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posted
Keep in mind that while I was primarily typing about the conventional paradigm of a drug, I also include religious worship and television, as well as sugar. All three produce noticeable mental changes while under the influence.
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posted
Sorry for doing a little more focusing on the legal side, so if you want just the moral part:
I think ideally, people have personal sovereignty that includes ingesting any substance they feel like (in the world which ensures this action has no direct effect on anyone or anything else).
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posted
Legalization is not that interesting of a topic for me anymore. I will argue it if it comes up, but there is nothing new under the sun there for me. Morality is more interesting because it is generally not argued, and immoral acts are permitted by the government all the time. Personally I believe that homosexual acts are sinful, but I support gay marriage for various reasons. I am hoping that if I cannot convince the antis that drugs are good, I can at least convince them that legal drugs are good.
Also, the more I learn about why people find it wrong, the better equipped I will be if I ever set up a pro-drug cultural advocacy organization.
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posted
I've never thought of it that way, Tom. That ties into so much other philosophy I'm surprised it never came up. The Divided Line, Nurture vs. Nature, etc. Have never, in my experience been applied to the issues of drug use.
There are several ways of viewing the human conciousness. Perhaps the most nihilistic is as a product of electrical signals in the mind. We may or may not even be in control, but the way we perceive leaves us with the impression that we are. In truth, though, under this philosophy, the things you do have no more meaning or legitimacy than an object continuing to move with the same velocity unless acted upon by an outside force. A brick falls when I drop it, and likewise under x circumstances with y set of previous experiences, the human mind will do z. You may think you have made a decision, where in actuality you did the inevitable. My favorite quote to sum up this idea follows: I think that I think, therefore I think that I am. That way of thinking, besides being fatalistic and tremendously depressing, lends itself to amorality, since all of my actions are inevitable anyway, so there can't be any moral judgement made.
Drugs cause your mood to change not by affecting your life experiences, but by acting chemically on the window you use to experience the world, much like tinting your windows green to improve the color of your lawn. So rather than say it is immoral, I would conjecture that it encourages an amoral way of thinking (which, by our society's standards, amounts to the same thing.)
posted
Personally, I believe that any self-destructive habit such as snorting coke or eating until one is morbidly obese is the same as shooting oneself in the head, only a little slower.
(To forestall the objections I see coming here; using drugs has very definite physical effects on the body, just as eating a ton of saturated fats does. This cannot be denied.)
Suicide is self-murder. Is there something fundamentally wrong with suicide?
I believe that there is. Others don't.
In the final analysis, though, Danzig, none of us can tell you whether drugs are right or wrong; that's a decision you must make for yourself. Morality is a personal conclusion, not something that's determined by the law or the Ten Commandments or the Koran or whatever.
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posted
You still have to pick up the brick and drop it before it falls, and that is your choice.
Taking a drug does not rob you of free will, no matter what its method of action. If that were true, every drinker would be driving drunk, violently attacking anyone they feel like, etc. Obviously, some people are aware that intoxication is not an excuse for evil. Nor is every drug experience the same thing. Otherwise, why take any drug more than once?
What is wrong with a tinted view? Have you never worn sunglasses?
Posts: 1364 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Welcome, Ninja! Avoid the trolls, et cetra.
Anyway, your anaylsis is true. If you believe people have the right to treat their bodies as they want, you don't care about people taking drugs. But if you do, then you care about drugs too.
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posted
MY point is not that, upon taking drugs, you immediately turn into an automaton, blindly following fate. What I meant was that the willingness to use chemical means to change your perceptions of the world, whether they be hallucinogenic or merely mood-altering, reflects a worldview that our true experiences, the ones we actually live our lives to gain, are no more important or meaningful than any other random natural event.
The brick falling was merely an example of a law of nature, gravity. The fatalistic perspective that drug use submits to sees human choices as random events, unable to be controlled.
Mind, I'm not saying that every drug user, before toking up, says to himself "I don't think human actions mean anything, therefore I'm going to smoke this joint of marijuana to make myself feel good since it doesn't matter what I do anyway." It's far more subtle than that. It's more of a philosophical undertone to his actions.
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My biggest problem with all altered states (drugs, alcohol, caffeine, tv) is the addictive quality of them. People start losing the ability to enjoy themselves without them. It's so easy to just turn on the tv or smoke some weed and then have fun. It's harder to become an enjoyable person who can always be entertained without them.
In moderation, I have no problem with anything that isn't excessively harmful. I think that drugs like LSD, Angel Dust, etc., are immoral because you become a threat to others when you take them. I don't think that trying pot once or twice is immoral, but I do think that smoking pot everyday is wrong. Not only is it physically harmful, it implies dependence and degrades your life.
I think that a truly moral and happy person will want to be fully concious for every moment of their life in order to enjoy it to the fullest. But if someone very occasionally wants to play around with altered states, I see no harm or immorality.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Drug use is not equivalent to suicide. Whether your drug is cocaine, marijuana, sugar, food in general, religion, or what have you, there are safe and unsafe ways to consume it. Marijuana has no long term health risks if it is vaporized or eaten. The opioids will addict you, but if you have access to a pure supply for the rest of your life then your health will not deteriorate. You would have to eat your weight in psilocybin mushrooms to overdose, and as psilocin induces rapid tolerance it is pointless to consume it more than twice a week at maximum. You have to die from something, and if I happen to OD when I am 75 or 80, oh well. If you actually know what you are doing, you can maintain a lifestyle of constant and stable use for many drugs. You see the junkie on the street, but you do not see William Halsted the former coke head and later junkie (for the rest of his life) who co-founded Johns Hopkins. Yes, the guy had a cocaine addiction that he cured with morphine.
Definite physical effects do not imply self-destruction. If endorphins are really the happiness neurotransmitter, then opioids are happiness manifested. That is not a bad thing. Obviously drugs have definite physical effects; that is why most of us take them. You might have a point with someone who uses one drug in unsafe ways, but what about someone like me, who generally finds a drug, uses it a few times, then goes on to the next? I am probably in better physical health than 85% or so of the US. Do not make false generalisations.
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posted
The ultimate responsibility in morality is the responsibility to use good judgement. Altering your mind in any way that could hurt your judgement is thus a violation of the ultimate responsibility in morality, and therefore is morally wrong.
In addition to that there is something bad about it that is not necessarily morally bad, but bad for you as a person. That is essentially the implied idea when you use mind-altering drugs that your unaltered mind is not good enough. It is, more or less, fleeing from your unaltered mind. It is being afraid of oneself. I believe this is bad for your character and self-esteem. It is to happiness in life as steroids is to victory in athletics.
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posted
As I told my friends in high school--I have enough fun with reality. Why should I risk screwing it up?
There is a phrase, "Stoners". It describes a person who's whole life revolves around the ingestion of drugs. They are dirty (clogged poors help retain some drugs), slow physically and mentally, and very self centered. If these are the results of altered states, then I find the high unworthy of the reward.
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You have it EXACTLY right. It's why I don't do any psychoactive drugs for the purpose of doing psychoactive drugs: it amounts to saying, even subtly, that your thoughts are the inevitable product of chemicals and electrical processes. That, ultimately, you are no more "human" than your computer, and that it will someday be impossible to distinguish between the two.
The logical extension of this philosophy is that the use of drugs to control thought would ultimately be of benefit to society, as selfhood has no intrinsic value.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I think it's intent demosthenes and Tom are talking about, Danzig. Sure, there's nothing wrong with wearing sunglasses. But he's talking about a green lawn. If no one else can participate in enjoying your green lawn because only you are looking at it through the right glass, aren't you pretty much experiencing your happy little world all by yourself? And having very little effect on the real world your fellow human beings live in? A lot of drug influenced music hits me like that, I wonder if I would appreciate it if I was high listening to it.
Posts: 377 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Actually, I have a real example of the tinted glass analogy- I have red tinted sunglasses, and when I first got them I would sometimes feel teary at how beautiful everything was, how green all the trees were, how blue the sky was, etc. etc. No one was ever as impressed by the view as me. I finally realized if I wanted to share the experience I would have to lend my glasses to the girls and the rest of the staff, but they're perscription. It really bothered me, I stopped wearing them.
Posts: 377 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: It is, more or less, fleeing from your unaltered mind. It is being afraid of oneself. I believe this is bad for your character and self-esteem. It is to happiness in life as steroids is to victory in athletics.
Go Xaposert! I agree exactly with what you're saying!
But I am wondering how you feel about television? Or sugar? Or caffeine? All of them involve escaping fron your unaltered mind. As I said before, I think that if you do this every once in a while, there's not a problem. But if you need to get home by 7 to watch that tv show you love, or if you just have to have some chocolate, I think there's very little difference from needing a hit. What do you think?
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I don't think the argument that chocolate, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, or other such habits qualify in the same realm. Drugs change the way you experience the world. This is far different from choosing to experience shallow things. To stretch an analogy far more than it was originally intended, if taking drugs is like tinting your windows green to make your lawn look better, wasting your life on television would be more like leaving your windows as they are, but choosing to fill your lawn with pink flamingos and old car parts. It's still a stupid idea, but it doesn't make the actual act of percieving the world different in the way that chemical substances can.
Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
First off, chocolate does change the way you experience the world. Chocolate stimulates endorphins in the same way that cocaine does. In fact, it's sometimes called the thinking man's cocaine. This site describes the stress relieving qualities of chocolate. Sugar, caffeine, and other addictive substances similarly alter the balance of various neuro-transmitters in your brain in order to make you feel good.
quote: Psychotropic drugs, alcohol, chocolate, caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, heroin, sugar, marijuana, speed and other foods or chemicals all try to mimic the action of the vital neuro-transmitters in filling the neuro-transmitter receptors in the brain and nervous system. This action tricks the brain into feeling normal, by artificially inducing the desired states of mind and feeling. In addition, the brain thinks that there is enough neuro-transmitters being produced, it produces less of them. When the action of the drug wears off, the brain is more deficient in neuro-transmitters and requires more of the drug or substance to feel normal.
Second, in my statement, "But if you need to get home by 7 to watch that tv show you love, or if you just have to have some chocolate, I think there's very little difference from needing a hit.", I should have specified, I see very little MORAL difference. Admittedly, there are very extreme physical and practical differences.
Finally, I do believe that television abuse does alter one's sense of reality, though admittedly, not on a biological level. When a person feels the necessity to watch a television show, what they are feeling is a necessity to escape from their reality (and themselves) into a different, fictional reality. I think that this is being afraid of oneself and is bad for a person's character and self-esteem. (To misquote Xaposert)
I do think that there are acceptable levels of hiding from oneself and avoiding full conciousness. Occasional use of television, sugar, alcohol, chocolate, pot, etc. may constitute avoiding life, but if it's done knowing full well that one is taking a quick and rare diversion from a conciousness that one enjoys, I see no problem. If it's done because one does not enjoy their conciousness, I see HUGE problems and I believe that is the source of addiction. I believe that the ideal person would feel no need to use any of these things because they would just have too much fun being themselves to ever want to alter that. While striving for the ideal is good, I don't think it's realistic to expect to achieve it.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
demosthenes, I have come to a conclusion that even if your fatalistic conception is true, your idea that it inevitably leads to amorality doesn't necessarily follow.
posted
I actually do think chocolate and sugar apply. They say chocolate is more powerful than love. But, I didn't go through much withdrawal (no fair checking my Hatrack posting rate )
I pretty much agree with Tom's first statement. I'd be interested to know, Tom, what your thoughts are on drug like states induced by religious observance are. I guess it depends. We can get the same highs from authentic relationships with people. (alpha brain waves, beta-endorphin surges.) What about through meditation? How does one quantify the difference between achieving altered states through active discipline rather than passive consumption?
And for some reason this reminds me of the Dune books. But I'll have to think about that. Sure the hero took a lot of drugs but he was also really brave and stuff.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
All of the non-chemicals I described give you a dopamine rush, just like cocaine. Chocolate contains either caffeine or one of its relatives. Caffeine will get you just as high as amphetamines; you just have more side effects.
Drugs do not cloud your judgment, if you know what you are doing. It is simple. Before you ingest the drug, set boundaries for yourself. Do not cross those boundaries.
Your thoughts are your own. Drugs will not change that. They enable you to think thoughts you might not be able to normally, but they do not push you there. Sorry, but if my taking drugs implies my thoughts are nothing more than chemical and electrical processes, it implies that yours are as well, whether or not you actually take them.
What about the story of my wisdom teeth? I was high. Probably the best high of my life, to date. I was looking forward to getting his teeth removed precisely because I knew I would have painkillers. However, the visit was completely legitimate; they needed to come out. Was I wrong to enjoy the high, or even to take the drugs? My teeth did not hurt much after they were taken out, so I had a lot of oxycodone pills left over. Those were fun, prescribed, and not being used as directed. What of the opium I smoked? There was no medical reason for that. I refuse to believe that it is wrong to take drugs for medicinal reasons. I refuse to believe that it somehow becomes wrong to take those same drugs to get high.
If you think chemicals influence your thoughts, I hope you do not watch television. That is a hell of a lot more pervasive than any chemical will ever be. I knew that my love for everyone was only MDMA; television becomes reality to many people.
Posts: 1364 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
What about the little mood lift of drinking St. John's Wort tea or sniffing lavender? What about burning incense or herbs to evoke a mood? What about using perfume to enhance eroticism? What about trancing out to music in a darkened room? What about yoga? What about breathing exercises? What about praying?
All of this produce altered states. Why deny biology?
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
I'd compare drug use more to what is generally referred to as onanism around here. I think drugs bypass the trouble of building meaningful relationships to reach the end without the means.
And P.S. I don't use sunglasses or St. John's Wort or Yoga. Though I obviously use Hatrack. On that score, I think TV and internet addiction is a neurological phenomenon. As Mack was explaining on the brain thread, our neurons to change with experience and demands.
quote:The ultimate responsibility in morality is the responsibility to use good judgement. Altering your mind in any way that could hurt your judgement is thus a violation of the ultimate responsibility in morality, and therefore is morally wrong.
Staying up late & not getting a good night's sleep?
Post-coital afterglow?
Both can be intoxicating, and we know that someone who is even moderately sleep-deprived has similar impairment to someone who's been drinking alcohol. Personally, I don't want someone significantly sleep-deprived to drive a car (which is why I often won't drive myself home after call), but I don't think that there is anything intrinsically wrong with pulling an all-nighter to study, or even to giggle at B-movies with a friend.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
Dopamine is prevalent in human sexual activity, D1 and D5 receptors target arousal, while D2 receptors are responsible for orgasm.
Women have more D2 receptors, as estrogen promotes the grown of both D2 receptors and 5-HT2A receptors (a type of serotonin).
More receptors, more sex, more dopamine, more pleasure--and dopamine is the neurotransmitter for learned behavior reinforcement.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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wow. lots of totally interesting points raised here.
amanacer,
Your point on dependence is apt, but how does one distinguish between ritualistic/habitual behaviors that demonstrate a dependence of a "good" sort vs. a "bad" sort.
As for living our lives as consciously as possible? I think that's a good goal to strive for, but my own personal theory is we spend upwards of 99% of our lives acting out unconscious (habitual) behaviors.
danzig,
is this thread meant only as a discussion of mind-altering drugs, or can physical-performance drugs be included? I'm thinking of drugs that are "good" in a clinical sense but "bad" in a competitive sporting sense. (my apologies for introducing the mind/body duality here)
posted
If you're one of those folks (like me) that consider the bible an ambitious attempt by an ancient culture to explain the world rather than the absolute literal answer to everything, then the whole story of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil sounds a lot like the discovery of mind-altering plants by primitive humans and the beginning of sentience.
In modern culture, drugs have gone from being a rite of passage, a coming-of-age ritual, to a structureless means of escaping reality. Rather than having a shaman guide a person through the experience in an attempt to experience the spiritual, drugs are used to "get high". Since drugs have no ritual place in our society, people have no respect for them and the whole experience is bastardized. This is why I support Native American use of Peyote, but don't think non-Native American should use it.
To say that drug use is morally wrong is laughable. The morality that says so comes from a religion (or religions) that have their roots in prehistoric experimentation with psychoactive plants that brought about belief in the supernatural.
Anyone interested in this topic should read Terence McKenna, particularly Food of the Gods and The Archaic Revival.
And in regard to marijuana, the last thing I need at my age is something that makes me paranoid and gives me the munchies. Posts: 173 | Registered: Jun 2002
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posted
This is such a complex issue, great topic, BTW.
I found myself in a strange position after many years of avoiding all illegal drugs. Most of the people I liked and respected the most in my life, the most honourable, the most loyal, the most sucessful and the most passionate were almost without exception people who took recreational drugs. Not to say that they were that way because they took drugs, they were that way anyway.
So it eroded my belief that it was such a bad thing and started experimenting a little myself. I got to try dope, coke, crystal and E, and for a little over a year wound up experimenting occasionally at friend's parties.
In the end, I've chosen to live in an unaltered state - except for those things which others have so rightly pointed out, alcohol, chocolate etc. It's not that I didn't enjoy my experiences, and it's not that I won't enjoy them again. It's more that most of the time I prefer experiencing the world unfiltered and unaltered, more that I prefer my own brand of consciousness than the manufactured one.
However I regard the idea that taking drugs to alter your perceptions somehow devalues your "unaltered" perceptive processes as unduly dramatic. It is what it is - an experience, no more, no less. At the right time I enjoy the experience of radically altered perception - as a musician experiencing music while on E is really something else.
I should also add that one reason I'm currently completely drug free (and have been for a while) is because of my partner, Jus. While she doesn't disapprove of drugs use, she refuses to take any herself - and of course I wouldn't push it on her. It diminishes our connection and understanding if one of us is altered while the other is not - so I prefer for us to stay on the same plane.
So I guess I can say that given the hypothetical posed, I don't believe there is a moral problem with recreational drug use. Everything in life is a risk in one way or another, but not everything is an experience. And in the end, experiences are the only things that will be worth anything at the end of your life.
Posts: 2245 | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
He said not everything experienced is an experience- I can experience (v) sitting at a stop light, but I wouldn't call it an experience (n).
Posts: 377 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I have to admit that I grew up being taught to value rationality and devalue altered states of any kind. It's (in a manner of speaking) part of my religion. You won't find it in that explicit form in any widely-circulated book I can think of, but so far as I have been able to tell, my church's general culture has been "Reason good; unreason bad." Altered states have been outside of our practice since we encountered them in the early 19th century (linky).
{It's worth pointing out, of course, that we don't live most of our lives in a state of unvarnished reason; in that sense one could suggest that a particular kind of altered state (one that is more rational than normal) would be good.}
My own observation is that people in altered states become less connected to what is going on around them. Even with the best of intentions they make bad decisions and foolish mistakes. I don't see any reason to subject myself to that, at least not unless there is some additional rationale (anesthesia, for instance) and there is someone to take care of me. Nor do I understand why someone would want to. My last close observation of such an event was the time the rest of my paleontological expedition became stinkin' (pun intended) drunk and initiated a farting contest. So much for thinking one of the girls was attractive...
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posted
Drunk people are rarely fun; noticeably less fun than people under the influence of most other drugs. That said, being the only sober person usually sucks. Too much worrying about others and too little common ground to make conversation with.
Posts: 1364 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote: Your point on dependence is apt, but how does one distinguish between ritualistic/habitual behaviors that demonstrate a dependence of a "good" sort vs. a "bad" sort.
I think that the difference between bad dependence and good dependence is essentially motive. With bad dependence, needing to always watch a certain show & etc., the motive is to escape from yourself and your reality. With good dependence, needing food everyday, etc., the motive is not about escape, but about healthy processes. Yet, I think that this can be tricky ground. I know that every time I get a craving for some type of food, I don't stop to analyze whether I'm doing it to escape or simply because I'm hungry. I guess all that anyone can do is try their best to be aware of their motives.
quote: As for living our lives as consciously as possible? I think that's a good goal to strive for, but my own personal theory is we spend upwards of 99% of our lives acting out unconscious (habitual) behaviors.
I disagree. I think that choice is the most beautiful and effective power on earth. Generally, I think that a person's unconscious behaviors are a result of choices. There are very few actions that a person can do without allowing them to occur.
quote: I disagree. I think that choice is the most beautiful and effective power on earth.
I wasn't talking about the nature of choice, just the actual usage of it. I think Lara made a nice point about the "sitting at a stop light". It's not an "experience" (I guess) because we're not all that concious while it's happening. I'd extend that to the drive home from the grocery story that includes that stoplight. Then, I'd include a large portion of the work-day leading up to that grocery-store run.
Perhaps concious choice is only engaged during a period of change?
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Unfortunately I usually experience sitting at a stoplight quite intensely. The longer I wait, the more intense it becomes.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote: I wasn't talking about the nature of choice, just the actual usage of it. I think Lara made a nice point about the "sitting at a stop light". It's not an "experience" (I guess) because we're not all that concious while it's happening. I'd extend that to the drive home from the grocery story that includes that stoplight. Then, I'd include a large portion of the work-day leading up to that grocery-store run.
Perhaps concious choice is only engaged during a period of change?
Hmmm, I see you're point, but I think that concious choice is engaged continuously. For example at that stoplight, a person can feel angry at the light, turn on the radio and sing with a song, take a moment to call someone via a cell phone, or sit back and turn one's brain off. All of these are choice that change the experience of the stoplight. I think that this is true of the trip to the grocery store and the workday. Choices are constanly made that impact your mood and life. But perhaps such mundane choices don't seem that important except in a period of change.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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