Anyone who drinks coffee for the energy instead of just because they like the taste of coffee is self-medicating. Anyone who drinks a nightcap to help themselves sleep is self-medicating. Anyone who has even taken a Benadryl as a sedative (popular before air travel) is self-medicating.
Hell, strictly speaking, anyone who takes over-the-counter drugs without consulting the doctor or pharmacist first is self-medicating.
Sherlock Holmes was fictional, but was inspired by several real people (including Arthur Conan Doyle himself), and was described as having a manic-depressive activity cycle. Holmes used cocaine as a stimulant when in the depressive part of the cycle. What makes that kind of neat is that 'manic-depression' wasn't a thing yet. Doyle couldn't have just decided to make a bipolar character. It had to have been informed by some life experience.
So many great writers and artists (Dickens, Poe, Hemmingway, Van Gogh, even Steven King) and in the modern era musicians and actors (Do I really need citations here?) have had substance abuse problems that one might be led to assume that a large creative output requires mind-altering substances just to shut your muse up long enough to get some sleep.
Of course self-medicating with controlled substances is a god-awful idea. No one is saying it is. But people sometimes lack better options (especially the poor, whose lives often consist of trying to pick the least-s#@&ty option), or just plain make mistakes. Plastering over that by saying they must be morally corrupt or too stupid to understand their decisions does not help.
The pushback on 'personal responsibility' in this thread seems to be driven by some kind of idea that if drug addiction is a disease then it isn't a crime, and it needs to be a crime for whatever reason. Why can't it be both? If someone commits a crime because they are mentally ill, they are still arrested and still have a criminal record. But they go to a mental hospital instead of (or sometime in addition to) jail. But someone gets arrested for heroin possession, they get a forced detox and a trip to jail. (Unless they're relatively rich, then they pay for their own rehab and get probation or a suspended sentence instead.)
Doing your own dentistry could be considered self-medicating.
Self-medicating with harmless, well known medicine is not the same as doing drugs. It never will be. When I feel sick, have a fever, I will pop an aspirine, take a cup of hot mint tea and go to bed. But I will not take meth.
You're right, it isn't the same. But it is two points at different ends of the same spectrum, not two things that are categorically different.
At one end you have coffee and Tylenol, at the other end you have heroin and meth. And in the middle you have Red Bull, alcohol, prescription drug abusers, 'high functioning' alcoholics and drug addicts, and so on.
Let me try this from a different angle. You won't ever do meth? Great. Good for you. I won't either.
Are you a better person than a drug user? Maybe. Maybe you were fortunate enough not to inherit an addictive personality, or whatever gene it is that causes certain families and ethnic groups to have problems with alcohol. Maybe you're better educated about drugs and their effects. Maybe you learned more productive ways to cope with stress. Maybe you just plain have more/better willpower. But maybe you've just been lucky to live in different circumstances. Maybe you're just lucky enough not to have another mental disorder (or if you do you've had the resources to tackle it a different way.)
But even if you are just plain better than a drug user, does that make them somehow subhuman? Unworthy of some compassion and understanding? Or is their only remaining value remaining pitiful so you can look down and feel superior?
More recently, Japan decided to lock up every addict they could find for two years.
And the US has been trying to lock up every addict they can find since the Regan Nixon Administration. How's that worked out for us so far?
More recently, Japan decided to lock up every addict they could find for two years.And the US has been trying to lock up every addict they can find since the Regan Administration. How's that worked out for us so far?
Well all we need to do is stop our citizens from traveling, keep people in their home towns, monitor every group and conversation of over 10 people, conduct random searches of peoples houses, stop any attempts to object to all of this, not bother with a trial for anyone we catch and then not spend any money on the prison where these people go and half of them die.
And THEN our country will be perfect, just like china!
And THEN our country will be perfect, just like china!
There is a reason I replied to the bit about Japan and not China. One of these things is not like the other, as they say.
That is to say Japan might have distorted statistics: see Man in Black's assertion that they managed to turn an illegal drug problem into a prescription drug problem, or New York City bringing down their homelessness figures by busing the homeless to New Jersey, or the Department of the Interior reclassifying golf course water hazards as Wetlands for environmental statistics. But I don't trust the Chinese government's assertions to have any basis in fact at all.
In any case, even if rigorous enforcement worked for Japan in the course of a few years, it has failed in the US in the course of three four decades. It is clearly not a cure-all.
And THEN our country will be perfect, just like china!There is a reason I replied to the bit about Japan and not China. One of these things is not like the other, as they say.
That is to say Japan might have distorted statistics: see Man in Black's assertion that they managed to turn an illegal drug problem into a prescription drug problem, or New York City bringing down their homelessness figures by busing the homeless to New Jersey, or the Department of the Interior reclassifying golf course water hazards as Wetlands for environmental statistics. But I don't trust the Chinese government's assertions to have any basis in fact at all.
In any case, even if rigorous enforcement worked for Japan in the course of a few years, it has failed in the US in the course of
threefour decades. It is clearly not a cure-all.
Yeah. I was mildly aware as a person when this was happening. It was...disturbing, to say the least.
Let me try this from a different angle. You won't ever do meth? Great. Good for you. I won't either.
Are you a better person than a drug user? Maybe. Maybe you were fortunate enough not to inherit an addictive personality, or whatever gene it is that causes certain families and ethnic groups to have problems with alcohol. Maybe you're better educated about drugs and their effects. Maybe you learned more productive ways to cope with stress. Maybe you just plain have more/better willpower. But maybe you've just been lucky to live in different circumstances. Maybe you're just lucky enough not to have another mental disorder (or if you do you've had the resources to tackle it a different way.)
But even if you are just plain better than a drug user, does that make them somehow subhuman? Unworthy of some compassion and understanding? Or is their only remaining value remaining pitiful so you can look down and feel superior?
Ross, I don't disagree with any of the points you've made in this thread, but there are a good number of people who think of drug users exactly how you're describing here. In my experience those are also the people who use marijuana recreationally and justify their use by saying, "Yeah, but weed's not a drug," and can't seem to conceive the spectrum of drug use that you talk about in an earlier post. Honestly, at this point I think anyone who isn't willing to consider therapeutic treatment for addiction is just looking to vilify a societally acceptable target.
More recently, Japan decided to lock up every addict they could find for two years.And the US has been trying to lock up every addict they can find since theReganNixon Administration. How's that worked out for us so far?
Note that the primary focus for the American project has been pushers. How addicts are dealt with has varied quite a lot by state and time period. That said, the US and Japan are not the same, and I certainly never said it was easy, cheap or reasonable to do what Japan did. Noe worth it, considering the various costs it brought on.
Self-medicating with harmless, well known medicine is not the same as doing drugs. It never will be. When I feel sick, have a fever, I will pop an aspirine, take a cup of hot mint tea and go to bed. But I will not take meth.
In the UK, I legally buy paracetomol+codeine tablets over the counter, for for my son's migraine headaches. They are clearly labelled addictive, and we avoid using them unless necessary. I wouldn't describe them as harmless.
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Before ADD was well known I guy I know would buy speed from a dealer to help him focus/study for college mid terms. Now it's called Ritalin and you can get a prescription for it.
Pot has been used for many years to alleviate anxiety and to cope with pain. I have a stash of oxycontin and hydrocodone that I keep in an emergency kit.
People self medicate and have been since the dawn of time.
-MD
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Even animals self-medicate. Bears have been demonstrated to eat willow bark for toothaches (Willow trees contain asprin in its natural form). Elephants will knowingly eat fementing fruits for the alcohol content, or in more modern times steal booze from humans.
There is a word for this behavior: Zoopharmacognosy
