DRUGS!

quote:

---

...hearing colors and seeing sounds...

---

I never experienced that; maybe I just didn't do enough LSD to be so far gone. I used to like the little microdots. Pop one, and before long everything would be incredibly funny. It was almost dangerous to take this drug and watch Johnny Carson. Visually, it was like looking at things through the most magnificent polarizing filter imaginable. The slightest gradations of color would stand out boldly, like some sort of over-saturated 3-strip technicolor.I know a lot of people who smoke pot, and since my job doesn't subject me to random testing I'll take a toke once in a while. Other than the occassional valium or xanax to relieve stress, alcohol and tobacco are the only drugs I use with any sort of regularity these days.I tried mushrooms a couple times long ago and hated them. The buzz is similar to an LSD high, but much grungier. It makes me feel dirty, and I don't mean that in a fun way at all.Cocaine seemed like the perfect drug, until friends started becoming seriously addicted. I'm glad it wasn't hard for me to give it up. All I had to do was avoid a few particular people.I used to love quaaludes. You never see those anymore.

---

W.W.E.D.?

quote:

---

I hope all of you who have purchased illicit perscription drugs realize that some of them could have been stolen at gunpoint like they were from my family.

---

I know that. Your criticism could just as well be made against anyone who drank during the 1920s. Or anyone who gambled in Las Vegas before the 1980s.Your point is taken, and I'm sorry about what happened to your family. But such incidents aren't entirely the fault of drug users. This country's insane war on drugs is every bit as much too blame, if not more.

---

W.W.E.D.?

nator writes me:

quote:

---

Except that Percodan, Percoset and Quaaludes do have legitimate medical applications and they are perfectly legal to use under a doctor's supervision.

---

But that distinction is irrelevant to the issue of crime being associated with the use of an illegal drug. Although the specific situation you cited about your family wouldn't have occurred in relation to Prohibition, it's still true that violent crime and murder, even against innocent people, were part and parcel of the alcohol trade.

quote:

---

But when you were a kid and buying and enjoying all of those illicit prescription drugs, did you ever once question how the seller obtained them?

---

No, I freely acknowledge that. I'm not defending illegal drug use, not even my own; I'm just saying that I think you overstated your argument a bit. Perhaps I was wrong, but you seemed to be identifying illegal drug users as a class of people uniquely associated with criminal activity and the victimization of innocent people. I'm not so much arguing with your basic point as saying that there's a lot more people than just drug users who enjoy doing things they don't really need to do and that have negative consequences for innocent people.

quote:

---

I kind of think that recreational prescription drugs are a luxury item that nobody actually needs and that letting people buy or simply give away whatever they want is a recipe to transform short-sighted, self-centered adolescent risk-takers with more money than sense into unproductive-at-best and criminal-at-worst people that the rest of us pay for, one way or the other.

---

Good heavens, you make it sound almost as bad as legalized gambling!But seriously, there are lots of "luxury items that nobody actually needs". The simple fact that nobody actually needs a particular thing is not enough reason to make that thing illegal.I think for the most part you and I are in agreement.

---

W.W.E.D.?

Dan Carroll writes:

quote:

---

From the inside of your head, they temporarily raise you to Human.

---

That's a great way of putting it!But in all honesty, at least in my experience, that's only phase 1. Letting H = Human, phase two can be expressed as H/2.

---

W.W.E.D.?

Buzsaw writes:

quote:

---

Btw, you miss my point that overall it's the natural relatively cheap food/herbal products that really do the most good without the side effects and scores of thousands die each year from prescription drugs in America alone. The MDs bury their mistakes, literally.

---

Here is one of those rare occassions in which I find some moderate degree of agreement with you. Although I think most people who take medicines genuinely need them, some people are too easily led to believe they need them when they really don't. I think most of us are better off avoiding drugs as much as possible.All through my teens and twenties and halfway through my thirties I played around with illegal drugs. Plus, as I had been trained to do growing up, at the first sign of illness I would go to the doctor and get a prescription for something, usually antibiotics; in those days I came down with strept throat and flu a lot. I never gave a thought to my diet. At age 34 I became extremely sick with something the doctors never figured out. I went to 3 different clinics, plus the emergency room of a large hospital with no luck. It lasted about a month and a half, during most of which time I was barely able to get out of bed and was in constant nauseous pain. I was tested for AIDS and every type of hepatitis, plus all sorts of other things I don't recall and nothing ever came back positive. Whatever it was, it VERY SLOWLY went away.Then about a year later I broke out in an extremely painful rash that baffled a couple of doctors. They thought I had a skin condition and prescribed a few things that didn't work. Then I went back to that same ER I had visited the year before and one of the doctors and/or interns correctly identified it as poison sumac (related to poison ivy but a couple orders of magnitude stronger). The cream he prescribed cleared up the rash within about three days.Those two experiences left me wary of some doctors, particularly older ones. The one who correctly identified the rash was only about 30.I'm 46 now and I haven't been sick since that rash. I haven't missed a single day of work that wasn't planned ahead. I still drink and, once in a fairly long while, smoke marijuana, but I pay a lot more attention to what I eat than I ever did before. Although I've never had a weight problem, I started making a strong effort to eat more fruits and vegetables. Nowadays I crave red grapes much more often than I crave a Snickers bar. I drink a fair amount of coffee, but I also drink a lot of herbal teas, especially green tea.There is absolutely no question that I am much healthier today than I was at age 34, when my drug use was at its heaviest and my diet at its worst.

---

W.W.E.D.?

Buzsaw writes me:

quote:

---

Those two phrases are are the bottom line to the good health life minus the pharmaceuticals.

---

Just so that we understand each other, I want to make clear that I'm not condemning responsible use of pharmaceuticals. I'm simply agreeing with you that they're easily abused, and not just by the patients who take them but also by the doctors who prescribe them.My sister is an RN and she would also agree on this point. She knows doctors whom she suspects have prescribed things more because of the benefits that will accrue to them from the pharmaceutical companies than for any benefits to the patient. Also, she complains about some of the drug ads on TV, saying that people will go to their doctor and say "I want Celebrex" or whatever and the doctor, in order to keep his or her patient happy, will prescribe it even though he may believe that the patient would be just as well off with a non-prescription pain reliever or even a change in diet.The bottom line is that doctors and drug companies are just as likely to be dishonest and corrupt as anyone else.

---

W.W.E.D.?

Nator writes me:

quote:

---

...I keep asking Buz to tell me the annual earnings figure for the nutritional supplement/herbal drug industry because it is just as profit-driven and self-serving as the conventional drug companies.

---

Indeed it is, as is any profit-driven enterprise. I agree with you that we desperately need to move away from profit-driven health care.I'm not all that well-informed about the controversy over supplements and the companies that produce them. I know there is one, and one of the sticking points, I believe, is over whether the FDA should approve supplements before they can be marketed. Is that correct? If so, I say yes, the FDA most certainly should have to approve them.But however Buz might feel about supplements vs. pharmaceuticals (and I don't doubt what you're saying), I inferred an agreement between us that the first and best method for most people to achieve good health is through diet and exercise. That includes actually eating the foods that contain the nutrients, not taking a supplement. If the supplements are any good at all, they should be used as just that: a supplement for situations where it's difficult to maintain a good diet.

---

W.W.E.D.?