Colossus said:
Never ceases to amaze me the harshness of judgment people lay down with drugs. Reminds me of grad school: No one had a problem in the world with future healthcare providers going out on a Saturday night and getting blackout drunk then barfing their guts out, but heaven forbid someone takes a few tokes and gets high. They must be a degenerate criminal scumbag
.
it's a tad bit more complex than that. Granted I have experience with drugs and I know more than the avg joe does about the effet of drugs, but drugs is a subject that most people are dealing with, using very little information and what information they do have is usually inaccurate.
let me give you an example. take my family. Besides myself, I also have an uncle who had a very bad drug problem, much worse than mine ever got, that pretty much severed his relationship wtih our family until maybe..5 or or so years ago. This is on my father's side of my family. In addition to that, my actual grandfather, is or was before he died, an alcoholic.
Now with that said, what if you.. are my little 22 year old brother. While extremely smart just like his big brother, he has no where near the... what's the word I'm looking for. he's live a much more sheltered life than I have. He looks at drugs, and the only thing he can draw on is personal experience.
That works both ways. First, he knows he has a brother that battled a drug problem and an uncle that did so as well. When you say drugs to him, it's what kept his big brother from going to his basketball games and it's the reason why he is just now seeing his uncle for the first time in his life at the age of 21. He's sheltered, **** he still hasn't had a drink yet (seriously), you think he knows or even gives a **** the difference between weed or cocaine? he doesn't care. he doesn't even know he is supposed to care. To him it's as cut point blank as drugs =bad. I'm not saying it's right, in fact it's a quite naive standpoint but it's very understandable.
Again, it works both ways. At the same time, he also knows that his grandfather,.. we have the same pawpaw lol, while, he could not go a day without his 2 six packs of miller lite.. and that was a good day, and every once in a while he would get pissed off and curse everyone out for no particular reason, and he was never in what you would call a pleasant mood and one time he got so drunk he tried to shoot my dad with a shotgun while my dad was running down the street (true story)... while all that is very true , it's also true that.. he never had to borrow money from anyone, while he was an alcoholic, he was always around. if he had go somewhere he had no problem getting there, he never had to steal to support his habit, he never got so drunk where he blacked out and ended up in missouri or any **** like that.. in his mind, pawpaw is just a little crazy and likes to drink.
Now compare that to the one mental image that my little brother has of our uncle growing up, which ws the time he came into town to visit, and after a few days my father reluctantly let him stay at his house, only to come home and have everythign in the house that was not nailed to the ground, including cough syrup, gone. that's mental image you aren't going to shake. rightfully or wrongfully. in my brothers mind, whatever caused that, or what lead him to that, is a bad thing. if you tell him weed is the gateway drug to that, he's going to be gung ho about it.
in short, drugs, in particular weed, for unfair but understandable reasons get stuck with harder drugs by association. I mean I know that weed isn't going to send you to the crack house or make you a dope fiend, but **** i've been out there that's how i know. most people don't know nor particular want to know. most people know someone who has ruined their or someone's life because of drugs and at the same time, most people have a visual image of an alcoholic in their mind and that picture, is pretty much the same. I've seen, because i've been in rehab, drunks that are much worse than any drug addiction by a very wide margin, but not everyone sees that. everyone associates the drunk as the guy who talks too much but other than that, he just needs to cut back on his drinking. everyone sees or pictures the drug addict, as just that. someone who is taking/addicted to drugs and drugs ruins lives.
In short, the battle is not even a...logical one. it's not one about actual effects of drugs on the body. People aren't really saying that alcohol is better for you than drugs or cocaine. People are saying that, drugs ruin lives, alcohol, in most cases, even somewhat extreme, won't.
it's not fair, but there it is.