MyDoorsAreOpen
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2003
- Messages
- 8,549
This is an issue I've been turning over in my head for years now. I should have known I'd end up writing a manifesto. Feel free to skip what I've written below and just answer the question. Mods, can I get a poll with this?
*****
Among those who condone recreational drug use at all, I've encountered a commonly held notion that this behavior fits with the youthful experimentation and boundary-pushing phase that marks the months- or years-long transition from childhood to adulthood. (Some of us willingly choose, or are forced by circumstance, to grow up much faster than others.) The implication, of course, is that when one's maturation or coming-of-age is complete, recreational drug use no longer fits, and should stop. Ideally, in this line of thinking, this letting go of drug use should feel as natural as a tree shedding a leaf in autumn -- those were fun times, but I'm past that. A lot of people who hold this belief would have a hard time accepting somebody clearly no longer a 'youth' by any stretch of the imagination who still recreated chemically, especially if they seemed to have no shame about it or no plans to ever quit for good. Such a person would be presumed to have matured abnormally, or incompletely.
From a traditional societal viewpoint, this makes sense. Risk taking is best done when one has the least to lose, that is, before making adult commitments and becoming enmeshed in a web of people who depend on you, and cannot afford (nay, do not deserve) the eventual repercussions of you putting your health and safety on the line. Simply put, drug use by older adults is irresponsible, and if you have so few commitments or responsibilities that this doesn't apply, this says nothing flattering about you either.
I see this argument. But frankly, I couldn't agree less.
From what we now know about the brain and other organs of the body that grow and mature in adolescence, any time before full adulthood is probably the worst time to use recreational drugs. Think of a tree that grows against a wire fence. The earlier in the tree's life it has to cope with a stiff wire fence pressing against it, the greater an influence the fence will have on the shape of the tree, and the harder it will be to ever separate the tree from the fence. It's well documented in the medical literature that the younger a person begins the episodic, years-long use of a mind-altering substance, the worse they'll cope with living without it (or something similar) if they ever have to, because the deeper an imprint it will have on them as a person. A 40 year old who started smoking cigarettes when he was 8 has a cigarette-shaped hole in his soul in the way a 40 year old who first picked up the habit after college doesn't. When a patient who's managed to quit drinking alcohol asks me if she can ever drink again socially, my answer is that she's only got a snowman's chance in hell if she ever was a moderate drinker.
There are plenty of cultures where the consumption of alcohol happens in small amounts, in very specific all-age social settings. Kids who grow up in these cultures are a lot less likely to ever abuse alcohol. They can vividly remember enjoying these events and relating to the adults there, who were drinking alcohol, without themselves drinking any of it. It would be very easy for a kid who grew up in such a culture to think of alcohol as something adults do, that isn't a big secret or taboo, and is associated with family or community bonding. Someone with such associations would be a lot less driven, as an adult, to drink in quantities or situations where sober people would have a hard time relating to them.
I don't see why other mild-altering substances, especially ones where low doses are not incapacitating but still enjoyable, couldn't develop similar places in human cultures. Just because there is no such thing as risk-free drug use doesn't mean the risk involved can't be substantially mitigated by social rules about when and how much is appropriate to use, and how someone under the influence of the drug ought to behave. I understand that cultural drug use patterns, and attitudes toward use, typically evolve over centuries of trial and error. Maybe I'm just too much of a liberal progressive, but I'm inclined to think that with the right initiatives and institutions, public opinion on an awful lot of things can be created and changed ad hoc. Granted this would probably work better for some drugs than others. I'm of the (also controversial) belief that there are some drugs that, by their intrinsic pharmacodynamics, just don't lend themselves to moderate use, and carry a substantial risk for serious harm at any active dose, in any set and setting, at any frequency of use, in most people. But I think this describes a small minority of the substances that people willingly put in their brains.
In the end, it's all about a critical mass of people who make social conservatives look delusional for thinking you can't be a recreational drug user and a responsible adult / upstanding citizen at the same time. Establishing that critical mass would be a formidable challenge. The problem is that drug use's "beyond the pale" status is self-perpetuating. The more adults who use drugs fail at living up to society's standards of adult responsibility and behavior, the more they prove anti-drug crusaders' point that drug use is incompatible with mature adulthood, and worthy of condemnation. And the more recreational drug use is condemned and marginalized, the more overrepresented people with an antisocial bent, who don't give a shit about community or the wellbeing of really anybody but themselves, will be among drug users.
I think the perspective of someone who's come-of-age and gotten some solid life experience before ever using drugs would, in and of itself, mitigate a lot of the inherent risk of drug use. A more mature novice psychonaut would be less likely to want to use in a way that alienated them from mainstream society -- or advocate that others do the same. This is because they'd be less likely to make the use of the drug central to their lives, and more likely to accept deep down that there are no shortcuts or free lunches in life. They'd be more likely to use moderately and put some thought into the set, setting, and timing of their use, since they'd more likely to see from the outset that they'd have to budget time, energy, and money to recover from and process the experience. They'd likely be more accomplished in other areas of their life, and therefore less likely to feel the need to attach bravado to their drug use in order to prove themselves to other people.
Someday, I may join (or found) a secret society of middle aged and/or older adults who are still interested in moderate, responsible psychonautical exploration, free of any of the "youthful indescretions" baggage that drug use tends to carry. For now, sadly, such a group would probably have to be fairly secret, because until a critical mass of dissenters is amassed, being a martyr to the cause and putting our careers, good legal standing, or the custody of our children on the line is just not a palatable option. Hopefully someday, though, membership in such secret groups would become so common and widespread that we'd all look around and realize the emperor had no clothes on. Then you'd see a sea change in public opinion, much as the acceptance of homosexuality has swept over the Western world over the past few decades.
*****
Among those who condone recreational drug use at all, I've encountered a commonly held notion that this behavior fits with the youthful experimentation and boundary-pushing phase that marks the months- or years-long transition from childhood to adulthood. (Some of us willingly choose, or are forced by circumstance, to grow up much faster than others.) The implication, of course, is that when one's maturation or coming-of-age is complete, recreational drug use no longer fits, and should stop. Ideally, in this line of thinking, this letting go of drug use should feel as natural as a tree shedding a leaf in autumn -- those were fun times, but I'm past that. A lot of people who hold this belief would have a hard time accepting somebody clearly no longer a 'youth' by any stretch of the imagination who still recreated chemically, especially if they seemed to have no shame about it or no plans to ever quit for good. Such a person would be presumed to have matured abnormally, or incompletely.
From a traditional societal viewpoint, this makes sense. Risk taking is best done when one has the least to lose, that is, before making adult commitments and becoming enmeshed in a web of people who depend on you, and cannot afford (nay, do not deserve) the eventual repercussions of you putting your health and safety on the line. Simply put, drug use by older adults is irresponsible, and if you have so few commitments or responsibilities that this doesn't apply, this says nothing flattering about you either.
I see this argument. But frankly, I couldn't agree less.
From what we now know about the brain and other organs of the body that grow and mature in adolescence, any time before full adulthood is probably the worst time to use recreational drugs. Think of a tree that grows against a wire fence. The earlier in the tree's life it has to cope with a stiff wire fence pressing against it, the greater an influence the fence will have on the shape of the tree, and the harder it will be to ever separate the tree from the fence. It's well documented in the medical literature that the younger a person begins the episodic, years-long use of a mind-altering substance, the worse they'll cope with living without it (or something similar) if they ever have to, because the deeper an imprint it will have on them as a person. A 40 year old who started smoking cigarettes when he was 8 has a cigarette-shaped hole in his soul in the way a 40 year old who first picked up the habit after college doesn't. When a patient who's managed to quit drinking alcohol asks me if she can ever drink again socially, my answer is that she's only got a snowman's chance in hell if she ever was a moderate drinker.
There are plenty of cultures where the consumption of alcohol happens in small amounts, in very specific all-age social settings. Kids who grow up in these cultures are a lot less likely to ever abuse alcohol. They can vividly remember enjoying these events and relating to the adults there, who were drinking alcohol, without themselves drinking any of it. It would be very easy for a kid who grew up in such a culture to think of alcohol as something adults do, that isn't a big secret or taboo, and is associated with family or community bonding. Someone with such associations would be a lot less driven, as an adult, to drink in quantities or situations where sober people would have a hard time relating to them.
I don't see why other mild-altering substances, especially ones where low doses are not incapacitating but still enjoyable, couldn't develop similar places in human cultures. Just because there is no such thing as risk-free drug use doesn't mean the risk involved can't be substantially mitigated by social rules about when and how much is appropriate to use, and how someone under the influence of the drug ought to behave. I understand that cultural drug use patterns, and attitudes toward use, typically evolve over centuries of trial and error. Maybe I'm just too much of a liberal progressive, but I'm inclined to think that with the right initiatives and institutions, public opinion on an awful lot of things can be created and changed ad hoc. Granted this would probably work better for some drugs than others. I'm of the (also controversial) belief that there are some drugs that, by their intrinsic pharmacodynamics, just don't lend themselves to moderate use, and carry a substantial risk for serious harm at any active dose, in any set and setting, at any frequency of use, in most people. But I think this describes a small minority of the substances that people willingly put in their brains.
In the end, it's all about a critical mass of people who make social conservatives look delusional for thinking you can't be a recreational drug user and a responsible adult / upstanding citizen at the same time. Establishing that critical mass would be a formidable challenge. The problem is that drug use's "beyond the pale" status is self-perpetuating. The more adults who use drugs fail at living up to society's standards of adult responsibility and behavior, the more they prove anti-drug crusaders' point that drug use is incompatible with mature adulthood, and worthy of condemnation. And the more recreational drug use is condemned and marginalized, the more overrepresented people with an antisocial bent, who don't give a shit about community or the wellbeing of really anybody but themselves, will be among drug users.
I think the perspective of someone who's come-of-age and gotten some solid life experience before ever using drugs would, in and of itself, mitigate a lot of the inherent risk of drug use. A more mature novice psychonaut would be less likely to want to use in a way that alienated them from mainstream society -- or advocate that others do the same. This is because they'd be less likely to make the use of the drug central to their lives, and more likely to accept deep down that there are no shortcuts or free lunches in life. They'd be more likely to use moderately and put some thought into the set, setting, and timing of their use, since they'd more likely to see from the outset that they'd have to budget time, energy, and money to recover from and process the experience. They'd likely be more accomplished in other areas of their life, and therefore less likely to feel the need to attach bravado to their drug use in order to prove themselves to other people.
Someday, I may join (or found) a secret society of middle aged and/or older adults who are still interested in moderate, responsible psychonautical exploration, free of any of the "youthful indescretions" baggage that drug use tends to carry. For now, sadly, such a group would probably have to be fairly secret, because until a critical mass of dissenters is amassed, being a martyr to the cause and putting our careers, good legal standing, or the custody of our children on the line is just not a palatable option. Hopefully someday, though, membership in such secret groups would become so common and widespread that we'd all look around and realize the emperor had no clothes on. Then you'd see a sea change in public opinion, much as the acceptance of homosexuality has swept over the Western world over the past few decades.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
