Alcoholism

[Deep Dish]

Down Low:
A marijuana user must smoke frequently to maintain sufficient blood concentration of the drug to be able to feel a buzz from its use. In doing so, the user gets high frequently. So marijuana users immediately develop the classic behavioral pattern of chronic drug abuse. To me, this is the most troublesome aspect of marijuana.

The dependency rating is estimated to be 9%, which is the same as caffeine. Do you worry about the social impact of Starbucks? Marijuana can be psychologically habit forming but use is not necessarily abuse, however frequent. Abuse requires profound negative consequences, an inability to stop in spite of the consequences, but the worst of negative consequences from marijuana are relatively mild, easily reversible, and the vast overwhelming majority of people—all but a few—never experience withdrawal symptoms. Also, "smoking" pot is a misnomer. There are alternative delivery methods of baked goods, vaporizers, and liquids, which eliminate all health arguments concerning smoking and carcinogens, which is the major argument of abuse. In fact, before drug prohibition, people didn't even smoke pot, it was all baked goods.

Some years ago, the typical dope that young people could get was of low potency. So they bought a lot and smoked it over and over again, all day, every day... As I understand, pot has become more potent over the years to match the needs of its consumers. The morning crew at the taco shop can have a giggle party in a car before each shift, and that's enough. It still doesn't change the character of marijuana as being a chronic drug rather than a recreational one.

The potency is higher but that means people smoke less frequently to achieve the same effect. If you doubled or tripled the potency of beer, most people would drink one third or half as much rather than get drunker. People establish a baseline and the baseline remains the same regardless of the potency; the potency simply modulates how easily you arrive there. But once again, use is not necessarily abuse. Besides, most stoners are responsible and aren't getting high in the parking lot before work.

 

[Deep Dish]

One thing I want add:

Whenever a guy would get into marijuana, he'd change. His thoughts and actions would become more and more undependable, irrational, and incoherent. Then of course, his breath, body, clothing, home, and effects would stink same as do smokers of tobacco or crack.

How offensive of you. Amotivational syndrome, the idea where marijuana causes a personality change towards laziness, has been dispoven by science. Marijuana does open the mind to creativity but it does not affect the capacity of rational thought, nor your sense of hygiene and organizational skills. The overwhelming majority of stoners are cigarette smokers, but a non-smoker stoner, such as myself, is imperceptible in breath, clothing, home, and effects. Any smell in my clothes or taste in my mouth is barely noticeable and gone within relative minutes. Someone who spent a whole day in a marijuana field would strongly smell, but that is extreme.

 

[Down Low]

The dependency rating is estimated to be 9%, which is the same as caffeine. Do you worry about the social impact of Starbucks?

Worry? No. I'm concerned with the hypermarketing of stimulants, as well as the Krispy Kreme, dominate-or-die business model.

Abuse requires profound negative consequences, an inability to stop in spite of the consequences...

English lesson: subject versus object

A human is a subject. A chemical is an object. A human does something to a chemical. Not the other way around. A bag of salt just sits there and does nothing until a human being creates action with the salt.

Abstractly, you can rewrite a sentence to turn the chemical into the subject, and the human into the object, and say that a chemical does something to a human. But just because it's technically correct in linguistics does not mean it's concretely correct in real life. The human action of ingesting or applying the chemical is the trigger for what later happens.

The human action of misusing a drug for purposes other than to treat a disease: this is the definition of drug abuse. Any drug can be abused: aspirin, penicillin, valium. Horrific consequences are not part of the definition; thus, need not occur for drug abuse to have occurred. A drug can be abused simply by using it without regard for proper dosage for its medicinal effects, such as when it is misused to achieve its side effects.

Drug abuse is not a subject. It's an object. The human who abuses drugs is the subject. It escaped you that you elevated drug abuse to being a subject, and degraded the persons involved. Once you relegated the issue to the realm of the abstract, it became very easy to separate the rhetorical elements of drugs, abuse, and their consequences. Because you were talking solely to achieve impact -- you were making rhetoric, not argument.

You completely missed the point. The negative consequence to society is not that marijuana causes d1cks to fall off or something like that. The problem is that millions of people stop honestly facing up to their problems, stop trying to improve their lives and improve their communities, and instead waste their time and divert their attention to behaviors of chronic drug abuse.

Smoking dope is like having elections: a big fvcking waste of time. Your problems can't be solved by lighting up any more than democracy can be exercised in a plutocracy.

One thing I want add: How offensive of you.

Ad hominem. (That's irrational...)

Amotivational syndrome, the idea where marijuana causes a personality change towards laziness, has been dispoven by science. Marijuana does open the mind to creativity but it does not affect the capacity of rational thought, nor your sense of hygiene and organizational skills.

Hippy drippy nonsense like "open the mind to creativity" does not require Doc Brown and his Time Machine to disprove. You're really scraping the bottom of the 1960s doper propaganda barrel. (...incoherent...)

The overwhelming majority of stoners are cigarette smokers, but a non-smoker stoner, such as myself, is imperceptible in breath, clothing, home, and effects. Any smell in my clothes or taste in my mouth is barely noticeable and gone within relative minutes.

"Barely noticeable" to you. Everyone else is tactfully offering you Tic Tacs. (...and undependable. Just like I said.)

 

[Deep Dish]

Down Low:
The human action of misusing a drug for purposes other than to treat a disease: this is the definition of drug abuse. Any drug can be abused: aspirin, penicillin, valium.

A drug is classically defined as “any absorbed substance that changes or enhances any physical or psychological function in the body.”

Caffeine is a drug. Sugar is a drug. Water is a drug. (Yes, water. Drink enough and you will die.) Alcohol is most definitely a drug, one of the hardest drugs, so by your logic anyone who ever drinks, in moderation, even one glass, is abusing drugs ipso facto and we should all turn Amish.

Ad hominem. (That's irrational...)

You have just committed a red herring. The sentence in question was an expressive comment, not an argument. Logical fallacies only apply to argument.

Hippy drippy nonsense like "open the mind to creativity" does not require Doc Brown and his Time Machine to disprove. You're really scraping the bottom of the 1960s doper propaganda barrel. (...incoherent...)

Excerpt from Wired Magazine

There’s some intriguing evidence that marijuana can actually improve performance on some mental tests. A recent paper by scientists at University College, London looked at a phenomenon called semantic priming. This occurs when the activation of one word allows us to react more quickly to related words. For instance, the word “dog” might lead to decreased reaction times for “cat,” “pet” and “Lassie,” but won’t alter how quickly we react to “chair.”

Interestingly, the scientists found that marijuana seems to induce a state of hyper-priming, in which the reach of semantic priming extends to distantly related concepts. As a result, we hear “dog” and think of nouns that, in more sober circumstances, would seem rather disconnected, such as “leash” or “hair.” This state of hyper-priming helps explain why cannabis has been so often used as a creative fuel, as it seems to make the brain better at detecting those remote associations that lead to radically new ideas.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/does-marijuana-make-you-stupid/​

"Barely noticeable" to you. Everyone else is tactfully offering you Tic Tacs.

No, actually, I have it field tested, so to speak. I've even walked by the police.

 

[Down Low]

A drug is classically defined as “any absorbed substance that changes or enhances any physical or psychological function in the body.”

Caffeine is a drug. Sugar is a drug. Water is a drug. (Yes, water. Drink enough and you will die.)

That's nihilism. If water is a drug, everything is a drug, and the word "drug" is meaningless. Besides, if you drink too much water, you'll just vomit and/or get the runs. It won't kill you. Lots of swimmers and sailors have swallowed too much water without lasting harm.

Water is an essential food. So is sugar. Sugar is needed in such great quantities that we manufacture a lot of it out of fats and starches. However, it's also clear that simple sugars are both poisonous and addictive when daily taken in quantities that far exceed the amount of sugar normally found in a diet of raw fruits and seeds.

Alcohol is most definitely a drug, one of the hardest drugs, so by your logic anyone who ever drinks, in moderation, even one glass, is abusing drugs...

Of course anyone who drinks alcohol (other than to treat an illness) is abusing a drug.

Logical fallacies only apply to argument.

This is an informal discussion, not a rigorous debate. If it were, you wouldn't be allowed to go back and cherry pick which parts of the debate you "really meant" after they were shown to be logically or factually false. Basically, your whole follow-up post was ill-conceived. Had you expertise in logic, you would have deeply edited that post, or nixed it altogether.

Excerpt from Wired Magazine

Interestingly, the scientists found that marijuana seems to induce a state of hyper-priming, in which the reach of semantic priming extends to distantly related concepts. . . . This state of hyper-priming helps explain why cannabis has been so often used as a creative fuel, as it seems to make the brain better at detecting those remote associations that lead to radically new ideas.​

Except that the "creative" writers make endless run-on sentences, "radically new" associations that no one but themselves find amusing, and pretty much forget manners and common courtesies. Like I said, a "giggle party."

I don't expect anyone on this type of message board to employ scientific rigor about argumentation per se. I do expect most matters to be so vulgarized as to be virtually worthless, pornographic junk. It's encouraging that men here are motivated to cut through the bvll sh1t and try to get across very exact ideas.

 

[Deep Dish]

Down Low:
The human action of misusing a drug for purposes other than to treat a disease: this is the definition of drug abuse...

...If water is a drug, everything is a drug, and the word "drug" is meaningless.

...Of course anyone who drinks alcohol (other than to treat an illness) is abusing a drug.

The distinction of abuse as "misusing a drug for purposes other than to treat a disease" is arbitrary. To quote Ethan Nadelmann, a leading scholar of drug policy reform,

The standard refrain regarding the immorality of drug use crumbles in the face of most Americans' tolerance for alcohol and tobacco use. Only the Mormons and a few other like-minded sects, who regard as immoral any intake of substances to alter one's state of consciousness or otherwise cause pleasure, are consistent in this respect; they eschew not just the illicit drugs, but also alcohol, tobacco, caffeinated coffee and tea, and even chocolate. 'Moral' condemnation by the majority of Americans of some substances and not others is little more than a transient prejudice in favor of some drugs and against others.

http://www.skeptictank.org/files/conspire/prohibit.htm​

To quote Marie-Hélène Lyle, author of a paper called "The Reclassification of Sugar as a Drug":

Often it is easy to make a distinction between good and bad drugs. For instance, we tend to label prescriptive drugs as being good drugs, and drugs taken for the sole purpose of pleasure, such as heroin and alcohol, as bad drugs. This qualitative distinction is not based on scientific or medical reasoning, but rather on arbitrary religious and cultural beliefs or political and historical factors. "The difference between Prozac and Ecstasy is mostly a matter of marketing."

http://www.lurj.org/article.php/vol1n1/sugar.xml​

With exception of the Mormons and Amish, almost nobody will agree with your opinion that drinking a glass of wine, for pleasure, is abusive. Most people consider responsible moderation to be the benchmark of use vs. abuse. Consequently, marijuana deserves the same consideration.

Besides, if you drink too much water, you'll just vomit and/or get the runs. It won't kill you. Lots of swimmers and sailors have swallowed too much water without lasting harm.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-drinking-too-much-water-can-kill

Except that the "creative" writers make endless run-on sentences, "radically new" associations that no one but themselves find amusing, and pretty much forget manners and common courtesies. Like I said, a "giggle party."

Tell that to Stephen King and William Shakespeare. (It's not absolutely conclusive that Shakespeare was a stoner but forensic analysis of pipe fragments found in his garden has revealed trace residue of marijuana and cocaine.)

 

[goundra]

Only libertarian atheists are even ATTEMPTING to properly face the problems of life. Religionists and party voters are still using crutches, just like users of caffeine, tobacco, alchohol and other drugs.

 

[Down Low]

For instance, we tend to label prescriptive drugs as being good drugs, and drugs taken for the sole purpose of pleasure, such as heroin and alcohol, as bad drugs.

Sole purpose of pleasure? Isn't heroin (and morphene) used to treat extreme pain in hospitals and battlefields? Isn't alcohol a common ingredient in cough syrups?

You made a poor choice of quotes.

I disagree about the "arbitrary" part. Life consists of simple truths. People who are trying to sell sh1t are always complaining that nothing's simple, appearances are deceptive, and so on.

 

[Deep Dish]

Sole purpose of pleasure? Isn't heroin (and morphene) used to treat extreme pain in hospitals and battlefields? Isn't alcohol a common ingredient in cough syrups? You made a poor choice of quotes.

The choice of quotes is perfectly fine.

Alcohol is a solvent and the only reason it's found in cough syrup is to dissolve the other ingredients. Alcohol does not treat coughs or any other ailment. So by your logic, anyone who uses cough syrup is abusing a drug since alcohol does not treat any illness. During Alcohol Prohibition, there was "prescription alcohol" but it was only a ruse of pretense as a loophole in the law so people could drink alcohol.

Heroin, in its form of brown sugar, is used solely for pleasure. The use of opiates as medicine underscores a point: since heroin and morphine are the same substance, the distinction between forms of substance is arbitrary. Historically, before drug prohibition, opiates were culturally regarded as morally acceptable for pleasure until the Chinese immigrated to America, when it suddenly became culturally immoral. Morality is relative, transient to different eras of time and culture, and therefore an arbitrary distinction.

I don't share your view of morality and I find all of your reasoning to be unpursuasive. Sure, taking a hit of marijuana or enjoying a glass of wine may be a trivial waste of time, but fvck you.

Unless you can point out a real problem with my reasoning, I'm done with this discussion.

 

[backbreaker]

Sole purpose of pleasure? Isn't heroin (and morphene) used to treat extreme pain in hospitals and battlefields? Isn't alcohol a common ingredient in cough syrups?

You made a poor choice of quotes.

I disagree about the "arbitrary" part. Life consists of simple truths. People who are trying to sell sh1t are always complaining that nothing's simple, appearances are deceptive, and so on.

you're cherry picking you arugment against DD but he has a very valid point; perscription drugs are somehow deemed "okay" while hard street drugs are deemed low class/immoral.; but it's chique to pop pills.

and the thing is, i mean i don't know the stats off the top of my head but i would bet a good ammount of moneymore poeple buy from persecprtion drugs than crack or meth or herion overdoses. outside of herion, crack and meth od's are not very common; your body shuts down before you get the chance to OD, where is H all it takes really is one bad batch /shot

with pills however, once your tolerance gets up to there you are playing russian rolette every time you pop. go to any NA meeting half the room there if not more is pill heads. go to any treatment center 75% of the elope there are pill heads. every celeberty drug death you can think of the last few years, wasn't crack or herion it was pills. pills kill.

 

[Bible_Belt]

go to any NA meeting half the room there if not more is pill heads. go to any treatment center 75% of the elope there are pill heads.

It's hard to compete with the distribution system that pills already have in place. People get a state Med card, then the state pays the doctor at "pain management" to just write scripts and also pays the pharmaceutical company to give out the drugs. It's the biggest and most successful drug-dealing scheme in history.

 

[Down Low]

Fine. I concede that society comes down harder on abuse of nonprescription drugs.

I still assert that chronic drug abuse, even with such a weak drug as marijuana, is much more dangerous to society than recreational drug abuse.

 

[Scars]

Seems like the thread got a bit derailed. But I don't mind really.

Anyways, I'm going to take the opportunity to turn it into my journal.

The goal.. not to drink until my birthday. Which is December 7th. 27 days.. Let's do this.

-Scars

 

[\O/]

Seems like the thread got a bit derailed. But I don't mind really.

Anyways, I'm going to take the opportunity to turn it into my journal.

The goal.. not to drink until my birthday. Which is December 7th. 27 days.. Let's do this.

-Scars

Good luck, bro!

I'm cutting down aswell. Don't think i'll manage to go cold turkey though. Too many social events in the coming weeks.

 

[Down Low]

Seems like the thread got a bit derailed. But I don't mind really.

Anyways, I'm going to take the opportunity to turn it into my journal.

The goal.. not to drink until my birthday. Which is December 7th. 27 days.. Let's do this.

-Scars

Have to drink for a couple days. Need an antiseptic in my nether regions. Usual reason. But I'll join you on the wagon starting Tuesday morning.

 

[Married Buried]

I condone smoking weed instead of drinking. Alcohol destroys every organ in your body. Just drink 3 beers, and have a toke of some good weed and you won't need to drink anymore and you will be much healthier.

 

[Scars]

Have to drink for a couple days. Need an antiseptic in my nether regions. Usual reason. But I'll join you on the wagon starting Tuesday morning.

Good luck!

So here's day 1 for me.

Actually, went surprisingly well. Despite it even being NFL Sunday, I resisted the urge. The only time it got really bad was around 4:30 when the Steelers started playing the Giants (Steelers is my team). I really wanted to do my normal routine and go grab a 12 pack from the store and enjoy a cold one, but I didn't.

A couple times throughout the day I found myself "bored" and thinking about beer again. I had to distract myself with various activities.

At one point, I felt like my heart was going to explode, and I was indeed having a panic attack. Once again, just had to distract myself. Luckily, I'm not trying to quit smoking either so the nicotine helped calm me down through some of these moments. But the cigs will be the next thing off the list eventually.

I also told my girlfriend my plan and she is being really supportive. She knows that I'm doing it for myself and all that.. but she has also been concerned about my health, especially when she's seen me throw up blood a few times. (I think my esophagus is started to take a punch and blood vessels were being blown, as it wasn't "a lot" of blood, but enough to make me go "wtf? this isn't good..")

All in all, not too bad. I didn't die or burst into flames like I initially thought. That was one thing I was afraid of. As I've heard people have actually DIED from cold-turkeying their alcohol intake.

Only thing is I have insomnia right now. Which I guess is to be expected. It's 12:46 right now.. but I won't really consider "today" a success until 2am, as that's when the liquor store closes and I can't even buy a brew even if I wanted. Not too much longer..

Thanks guys.

-Scars

 

[Married Buried]

Good luck!

So here's day 1 for me.

Actually, went surprisingly well. Despite it even being NFL Sunday, I resisted the urge. The only time it got really bad was around 4:30 when the Steelers started playing the Giants (Steelers is my team). I really wanted to do my normal routine and go grab a 12 pack from the store and enjoy a cold one, but I didn't.

A couple times throughout the day I found myself "bored" and thinking about beer again. I had to distract myself with various activities.

At one point, I felt like my heart was going to explode, and I was indeed having a panic attack. Once again, just had to distract myself. Luckily, I'm not trying to quit smoking either so the nicotine helped calm me down through some of these moments. But the cigs will be the next thing off the list eventually.

I also told my girlfriend my plan and she is being really supportive. She knows that I'm doing it for myself and all that.. but she has also been concerned about my health, especially when she's seen me throw up blood a few times. (I think my esophagus is started to take a punch and blood vessels were being blown, as it wasn't "a lot" of blood, but enough to make me go "wtf? this isn't good..")

All in all, not too bad. I didn't die or burst into flames like I initially thought. That was one thing I was afraid of. As I've heard people have actually DIED from cold-turkeying their alcohol intake.

Only thing is I have insomnia right now. Which I guess is to be expected. It's 12:46 right now.. but I won't really consider "today" a success until 2am, as that's when the liquor store closes and I can't even buy a brew even if I wanted. Not too much longer..

Thanks guys.

-Scars

The worse is yet to come. 1 day is nothing. You won't even notice the withdrawls until 3 or 4 days.

 

[Scars]

Day 2 - Failed

Sorry guys. Started reading up on withdrawl symptoms and read about TD and having seizures etc.. and it kinda scared the sh!t out of me. I'm having a cold one now, my first one. I plan on weening off instead. Or if anything, talk to my doctor, because I don't want to make the problem worse. If anything, I bought myself a 6 pack, and not a twelve. So the absolute worst I can do is have 6 beers tonight.

I do feel a little more in control though. The fact that I could go 48 hours without drinking and all.

My goal is ween slowly into have like 2-3 beers a day. I enjoy drinking too much to quit it completely.

-Scars

 

[Bible_Belt]

If you drink a higher quality beer, you will tend to drink less. A darker beer tends to be more nutritional, which fills you up. My pick right now for the money is Shiner. The Shiner Bock is my favorite. Bock was brewed by fasting monks who could have beer, but not food. I would call it the opposite of Keystone Light. Most American swill gets you drunk with minimal nutrition, which is what makes it so profitable.