Tony White

Thanks for your comments

Nick says:

I guess i've got a bit of the puritan about me when it comes to the drugs question. I always hear myself thinking "different strokes for different folks", but I do kind of wish the drugs question could be put back in the sealed box, and wasn't troubling us all. Although, yeh I expect some people can use some drugs effectively some of the time.

Roses says:

Hi. Are there any real uses for recreational drugs or even for that matter, performance enhancing drugs. I mean... why do they exist. They must exist for something other than to ruin a good thing? Where did they come from and how did anyone discover them?

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Me says:
Thanks for the comments and they raise good points:
Throughout time governments, health services and the press have constantly presented the notion that our society is on the brink of a drug induced anarchy. In the past in Australia we have had marijuana presented like so:


This is how the governement and media presented the effects of marijuana 50 years ago. Now as you look back it is just so corney and absurd. In 50 years they will look back at how Ice is now presented and it will appear just as absurd.



At the moment the anarchy is going to come via Ice or methamphetamine. We are told that this is a highly addictive and dangerous drug and we are getting more and more addicts being identified. We are told that we are yet again on the edge of a tsunami of Ice drug addicts appearing in our cities.

Of course this wont eventuate - yet again.
To my knowledge over history societies have disintegrated or collapsed due to political reasons, economic reasons or religious reasons but I am not aware of one that has ever disintegrated because of a drug problem.

Wait a minute I may have thought of one!
Those two cites of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Now whilst they weren’t actually destroyed by drugs but instead by one very pissed off god who rained down on them - fire and brimstone, they were the place to party in biblical times. One would imagine that there was a lot of heavy duty drug use there. Keith Richards could have snorted his father’s ashes there!

Other than that societies are not destroyed by drugs.


Sodom and Gomorrah was THE place to party in biblical times. But they raged so late into the night, so often, that god couldn't sleep and so he decided to put a stop to it all.



Drugs in society
There are a group of people in every society however that will become dependent drug users. Just like we have recreational users, experimental users we have a group that are dependent users. These are the people who will become drug addicts. They are the smallest group in numbers but they use up most of the resources like health and legal resources.

It is presented to us that this new drug Ice will make many people drug addicts because it is so addictive. Even if we are being told the truth about its addictive qualities that refers to physical addiction not psychological addiction. When one becomes physically addicted to a drug that means they will suffer physical withdrawal symptoms when they stop using. This means the person will experience very bad flu like symptoms for 1 to 3 weeks depending on the degree of drug use prior to stopping. After that the physical addiction is ended and the person has no physical cravings for the drug.

Then comes the really hard part of beating the psychological addiction. In the history of the vast majority of drug addicts they have gotten off drugs on many occasions. This is not the hard part. The hard part is staying off the drugs or beating the psychological addiction. It is the psychological addiction that makes the drug addict

But we are told that it is the other way around - “people become drug addicts because they take drugs like Ice”. This is not true. No one wants to be a drug addict. It is a horrible life style with numerous, family, financial, health and legal problems. So why does a person become a drug addict?

Well if you as a young child are told your were ‘shit’ and treated like you were then you grow up believing you are. So if you grow up with a very low self esteem thinking you are shit what will you do as an adult?. Well you will create a ‘shit’ life for yourself. One way of doing that is to be a drug addict. You live a shit life because you believe you are precisely that. So it is not the drug that makes the drug addict, it is just one way to live out a life where you have a very low opinion of yourself. There are of course many other. For example the person who is anorexic or the person who can be involved in domestic violence. These people also hate themselves and thus they get involved in a life style that reflects that self loathing. To stave self to death requires a good deal of self hatred in the first place.


No one does this to themself for any length of time unless they hate self.



So there is this group in society who hate self and will use a drug addiction to create a life for themselves to live out that life script of self loathing. This group exists in society and is not going to go away and of course in one way the law is no deterrent with this group. If you imprison them then they live out their horrible life in a prison which fits the life script like a glove.

But the important part here is you can’t become a long term drug addict if you view yourself as at least an OK person. Simply the life style just does not fit their life script or beliefs about self. So society is never going to get over run by Ice addicts as the vast majority of people don’t have that type of life script or self loathing.

So the smart society is going to stop having the “War against drugs” and accept that there will always be a drug addict group in the society. So you stop trying to eradicate them out of existence and you manage them. If that is done then they have less impact on the society in general that you would if you are trying to eradicate them.

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