amnesiaseizure said:
So they are not a responsible adult because they've got themselves into a hole huh? What else shall we judge them responsible or not by then - whether they pay their bills on time, if they can maintain adult relationships for x amount of years, if they are actively following the political swings and roundabouts of our time??! I think you are being a fascist Ximot, yes. To bring in the idea of taking away someones right to vote based on whether they have become addicted to a particular substance of not (and thus not a responsible adult) is fucking ridiculous. What other ideas do you have on how to gauge somebodies right to vote and how do you envisage being able to enforce it?
If no-one had wanted to help me look more closely at myself then I may well be still using or dead - what a shame that there are people who suffer from 'helper syndrome'. There's a big difference between someone who wants to rescue others and those that want to help them, remember that.
On another note (and the reason I checked back here so soon) this is an interesting article I found on Wikipedia - Rat Park
Hmm... you're right and I am being a fascist in my post above. removing the right to vote is going a bit far, you're spot on. I retract my statement. I guess I said it mainly for shock value, to kind of drive home my point that they're irresponsibleand not really fulyl developed human beings. Remember I also said that it shoudl be their right to destroy themselves.. and who are we to interfere wit that? So, leave them be!! Unless they genuinely want help (and I don't mean free dope by that) - in which case they should get help indeed. But they should then also actually have a genuine desire to use that help and keep clean.
Regarding all the rest of what I said, I stand by it. Read carefully how I am wording everything else...I am sick of the finger-pointing moralists who think we need to nurse addicts no matter what. I am not talking about those who got into a hole. I myself was once addicted to a state of mind - depression, to be precise. And if I hadn't gotten helping hands, I may not be alive now. But there's a difference betwene people who act out of goodwill and people with helping syndrome... who will repeatedly, compulsively help people who may not even really want the help, or deserve it - considering they consistenly destroy all the positive effects of the help they got as they CHOOSE to become addicted again.
What I meant was people who just go back to the hole every time someone has helped them out of there. Whether it's depression, or addiction to a substance or whatever. Or debt... I'd help a family member or close friend with debt problems, but not repeatedly. Second or third time round I'd just shrug and let them be. Cos all I'd be doing by helping them would be to support their helplessness, but not actually them as people.
Regarding animal studies, I am wary of them. We're animals, sure, but noble ones. We're right in-between Animal and God (for lack of a better word, you get the drift I'm sure). Now, if we're merely animals, of course, we act as they do. But we're not, we have far more potential - hence we have power over the animals, control them... oh, and animals don't actually have the right to vote either, do they?
As humans, if we want to live up to our full potential, we need to activate other chakras than just the root/base ones that are of the animal world. To meditate... seems animals don't do that, well, not the way we do anyway. So, since we are part animal, I can accept that as a REASON for addiction but not as an EXCUSE.
