[10] Face the Facts by Anonymous

I believe that anyone who would say that this essay was a waste of thier time, or deny any of the information in it or just shrug it off without giving a damn should remember that very rarely does someone take a drug with the intention of ending up in a hospital (no matter how fun it seems) or a morgue. I'm pretty sure that nobody has ever taken a drug with the intent of contracting HIV or hepititis from the dirty needle. These things happen. Believing that drugs aren't dangerous for any reason at all is, by destiny's choice, grounds for termination via natural selection. Many stronger willed than you have become addicted. Many smarter than have ODed. Many healtheir than you have died from drug abuse.

Argueing which drugs are safer or healthier is like comparing juggling knives to swallowing swords.

Don't just ignore this, It was written for YOUR sake, because it is indeed YOU who is in very real danger if you choose to use drugs of any kind. Death is not a piece of propaganda.
 
Dj_TranceMadness said:
That may sound all nice and dramatic, yet the truth is that u don't have a choice to be born or not but you do have a choice as to what you do with you're body
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There's not much choice involved in contracting a terminal illness, natural disasters, polluted air, or having the planet struck by a meteorite either.

I feel real stupid if I passed up drugs the day before I got hit by a bus.
 
Essay: Face the Facts by Anon.
Some drugs are more dangerous than others. Opiates, cocaine and amphetamines are much more likely to hurt or kill you than ecstasy, psychedelics and cannabis. All drugs were not created equally. They have different properties and effects, and some of them are more addicting, or more neurotoxic, or more dangerous than others. This isn't a misconception, or propaganda, or an unfair stigma. It's a cold, hard fact.
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I disagree and I think that statement is packed with 'unfair stigma'. For a start, thinking that an amphetamine addiction and an opiate addiction should be placed into one catagory (or a similar category) is completely inane! There are differences which suggest that the amphetamine addiction is more psychologically based, where as the opiate addiction is more physiologically based. Yes, stimulants and opiates rate higher in potential for becoming addicted than does cannabis, MDMA and psychedelics, but we cannot say with certainty that people who take stimulants and/or opiates are more likely to die from thoes drugs. For example, take the people who have taken acid, and have been on the trip for 13 or 14 hours. Some people have been known to go to great lenghts just to make this trip stop. Thirteen hours and they have just had enough. They want it to stop. So they do something irrational such as throw themselves infront of a bus just to end it all, as well as ending their lives. Now tell me a situation such as that isn't as potentially life threatening as say someone who has consumed a quarter gram of crystal and is wide awake and alert. However, I am not using that as a justification that one drug is less harmful than the other!


Getting addicted to drugs happens subtly, and even strong-willed people have caved in. Those looking to drugs for an escape from their problems are at worse risk, but it can happen to anyone. There are warning signs. Learn them. Watch for them. And when you notice them, stop taking the drugs. If you don't, they will catch you and hold you and you'll have a monkey on your back nearly impossible to get rid of. Even happy, strong-willed people with non-addictive personalities have ended up hooked on drugs. It's a fact.
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I'm inclined to agree with the first few sentences, although I don't believe that it always happens subtly. I've known people who it quite quickly took a hold of, and by this I mean that their deep, controlling, overwhelming desire to take the drug took a hold within a matter of weeks to one and a half, two months. This, I dont consider subtle, however my own journey was more subtle, taking many months and spanning over years. Yes, it can take a hold of someone with even the strongest will not to let it rule their life. And somewhere along the line I think that the people with the stronger will NOT to let it take control of life, actually deny the fact that it has a lot harder (thats when and if it does).

Warning signs ARE there yes, and we should learn them (and from them), and we should watch out for them, not just within ourselves, but also in our friends. But to say '... when you notice them, stop taking the drugs' is ludicrous. Am I supposed to believe that the solution is actually that simple? It really sounds like the advice and experience of an inexperienced person. Someone with experience knows that it is NOT always this easy.

Addicts are more likely to use drugs irresponsibly, and thus, to die, than non-addicts. An addict may very well know everything there is to know about using drugs responsibly. But let me ask, when your covered in a cold sweat, your entire body groans with pain, you can't stop fucking shaking and every single thought is about getting that drug in your body, will you take time to find a clean needle? Will you test a small amount first, to determine how strong it is? Will you stop at the dose you need to maintain, or load up everything you have?
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The drug addiction your referring to in the begining of this paragraph sounds like its from the opiate group, and its unfair to write an essay giving your opinion on the 'Hard Facts' of drug use and simply focus on this one drug group. I was an methamphetamine user for a very long time and not once can I remember lying in a cold sweat, shaking, with my body groaning simply thinking about my next hit. However, I know a few herion users like that. I did have my periods where things didn't seem to be working to plan and it brought on the effect of consuming thoughts about the next hit, but never brought on cold sweats or uncontrollable shaking.

And, when your world is crashing down because of your addiction, will you even care? An addict wouldn't, and that's a fact.
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You think addicts don't care about whats happening in their world? Just so long as they have a steady supply of their poison, everything is dandy? Thats so ignorant.

And when you're dead, none of that knowledge you held matters, and that's a fact.
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You think just because the death of a friend, an aquaitence, or even a stranger, doesn't deter a user to completly stop, that it then becomes an ineffective method of education? Maybe you need to go out, get yourself hooked on as many drugs possible, lose a few friends, read a few newspaper reports on people OD'ing from GHB/etc, thus experiencing these things you so claim as 'cold hard fact'. Then come back and write an essay on how different opiates, stimulants, entactogens, etc, affect a person and which is more dangerous. Write about how it all subtly takes a hold of you, but most importantly, you tell me how_easy_it is to notice the warning signs (admitting them to yourself as warning signs), and then just 'stop' because you know its a dark path to travel. Also, tell me how much you DO NOT think about how your world is crashing down around you simply because your so consumed by your habit to notice!
 
This whole essay just feels like a guilt-trip to me. We all know that we're harming our bodies and taking risks. I think the fact that we come to this forum proves that much.
 
I think its good to read these types of essays, just as much as any other ones, and be critical about them, just as we should with all informative peices of writing. I think this author has a few important points, but they are oversimplifying and making a few assumptions that need to be thought through or justified rather than just stated. I agree with most of the in depth assessments that have already been posted, so i am not going to go way into it.

Here are some other facts to face:

Drug users have accomplished amazing things in their lives, and in many cases would not have accomplished them without the drugs. Many people have used drugs, stopped and gone on and been fine. Many of your parents did drugs. Users can stop and addicts can recover, but it can be very very hard. We are all going to die, drug user or no.
 
ayjay said:
I think it's funny that some people think MDMA is "safer" than methamphetamine ;)

The only drugs that I have declined on the basis of safety were certain psychedelics - datura and amanita muscaria in particular. Everything else has an acceptable and manageable risk factor. (Oh, but I would probably say no to inhaling petrol fumes....)

The best thing about the posted essay is the advice to watch for signs of dependence in your own use. This is a hard one - there's not much out there on spotting these signs. I guess you could use clinical measures of dependence but I think we can do better than that.
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Methamphetamine is not MDMA
Commentary on "Club Drugs Inflict Damage Similar to Traumatic Brain Injury"
http://www.maps.org/sys/nq.pl?id=1484&fmt=page

Actually MDMA is safer. And no I am not saying you are saying it's a Methamphetamine.
But, you need to read up on this shit before typing.

Saying it's safer does not mean safe, however. Not that there has been any proof that MDMA ruins a human brain if they take a pure low dose. There is data that suggests a decrease in a personal total capacity of recall (verbal, etc...) from their previous test scores but even then this is not a ruined brain.
 
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day_for_night said:
mdma is not an amphetamine, its an entactogen. it acts on different neurotransmitters than amphetamines (mainly serotonin vs. mainly dopamine).
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Methylenedioxymethamphetamine

Dunno, from a functional group name point of view, that seems to be an amphetamine. Also, check BP, heart rate, ect while rolling, it most def has the typical physical results of an amphetamine.
 
this essay tells me that the author mainly likes to hear his or herself talk. this is the wrong choir to be preaching to, with innacurate information peppered throughout the D.A.R.E. propraganda laden piece. and to say MDMA is less dangerous that opiates is absolute nonsense. it is known that with chronic use of MDMA, there are present threats of brain damage, overheating, depression, and a vast assortment of negative decision making skills effected. with opiates, of course the risk for dependency is a real threat, but the damage is in a concentrated area, ie..liver, which can be treated...and there are also products that help ween and eliminate addiciton. fool.
 
"will you take time to find a clean needle?"

Yes I will, and have before, not every addict is a pathetic junkie that uses toilet water to prepare drug solutions.

Opiates, cocaine and amphetamines are much more likely to hurt or kill you than ecstasy, psychedelics and cannabis.

Says whom? Ive seen people end up in the hospital from 5-meo-amt. Ive read a plethora of reports of people hospitalized because if ecstasy pills laced with dxm, and read reports that amphetamines increase mdmas neurotoxicity tenfold, and amphetamines are obviously common adulterants in ecstasy if you've ever read pill reports. Opiates? From what most sources say, non neurotoxic for the mostpart, these generalizations may be true in some instances but a really a bad way to look at them.
 
The author perhaps overlooks the adulterants that show up in MDMA and the damage they can do. But they are not the same adulterants in the same amounts in all pills. So, I have to agree with his assessment of which drugs pose greater dangers.

Opiates are the most dangerous of all because of the overdose potential. Too much, and you stop breathing. And yes, users know this. So, why would people familiar with opiates downplay the risk of overdose ?
 
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