Society ridicules drug addicts

I think the line is drawn when your drug or drugs of choice gets in the way of living your life, and sort of take over your life. I figure you could live a completely productive life, and if you wanna get high after work or school to wind down thats ok. but the problem is when you can't handle work or school without being high on something. it's no good when you wake up and just wanna get high.
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Ok but what about people who wake up and just want coffee, or a cigarette? Where I work when the coffee machine breaks they bring in any emergency one. And what about people who need something to sleep every night?

i still wouldn't call it a disease, it just becomes a habit so deeply engrained in your mind it's hard tostop. it's just like if you did any activity for a number of years, and stop of course it's gonna suck just cuz it's become the norm.
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I think its more than just engrained in the mind. In the case of opiates, and even caffiene to a mild extent, its engraned in the body.
 
dankstersauce said:
I think the line is drawn when your drug or drugs of choice gets in the way of living your life, and sort of take over your life. I figure you could live a completely productive life, and if you wanna get high after work or school to wind down thats ok. but the problem is when you can't handle work or school without being high on something. it's no good when you wake up and just wanna get high.
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How do cigarrets (sp?) fit into this? They often kill the user, which i'd say is a fairly big impediment to "living your life", but until then, u can live fine. Should addiction to cigarrerts be classed as a (potentially fatal) mental illness?
 
Tobacco smokers are addicted ill people who consistently self harm;) They need locking up for their own protection untill we can implant chemicals that prevent them smoking8o
 
Man, I hate to admit it but it's true...there's a difference between cigarettes, coffee, and a few glasses of wine and cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. I smoke cigarettes and they're very addicting, but they don't get you high. They calm you down a little bit (really they get rid of anxiety from not having a cigarette caused by the cigarettes). I don't care what your drug of choice is, as long as you can live a normal and productive life. Most people can't do so and have to admit that, it's not cool getting high all your life.
 
JTMarlin said:
I don't care what your drug of choice is, as long as you can live a normal and productive life. Most people can't do so and have to admit that, it's not cool getting high all your life.
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I would dissagree with that, most people do do so, the majority of people use legal and illegal substances with a 'normal' (what is that exactly?) and productive life.

The majority of substance users address their use when other factors in their life take presedence, such as career, children, relationships, yes a very very very small percentage of substance users find they do not have the tools to 'unstick' themselves and approach services (or are forced by the justice system) where they find a very dissapointing success rate.

In my opinion the medical model is to a large extent responsible for this.
 
MAn, you can take anything someone says and break it down. There are some things that make it easier to be normal. We know what normal is, it's not sitting around all day smoking weed, drinking alcohol, or shooting up heroin. Whatever your drug of choice is, don't let it take over your life (drugs do take over peoples' lives, I've seen it....it's their fault, fuck them). That's all I'm saying. You don't see many people who sit around in a room to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. They're not recreational drugs in the normal sense. Everyone knows this, it's common sense. Yes ,cocaine and caffeine are both stimulants but there is still a difference.
 
What do you call a coffeehouse, or the smoking area, other than a room where people sit around and drink coffee or smoke cigarettes?
 
DISEASE

"A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms.

A condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and harmful."

By definition, addiction is definately a disease. But then so are countless other things that we don't commonly refer to as diseases. I'm with Gaz, let's find a more suitable word that isn't so misleading.
 
DISEASE

"A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms.

A condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and harmful."

By definition, addiction is definately a disease.
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How does drinking coffee meet that definition??
 
What I have a problem with is seen everyday on these boards.

How come someone is allowed to praise drugs, vindicate anyone who has views agasint drugs and any social trends against recreational drug use- yet at the same time feel he is a victim to drug use?


Either drugs are evil and we shouldnt have them- or you deserve everytihng you get if u get an addiction that takes a hold of you. (Ofcourse, im not including say... someone who develops an addiction to painkillers after breaking their back)
 
People who get addicted to drugs through purely recreational use get no pity or sympathy from me. There's not many ways to have fun or get pleasure without paying the price, either monetarily or health-wise. The difference between drugs and a disease is, if you get mesothelioma (a form of lung cancer) from breathing asbestos dust in, you're not going to feel better by breathing in more asbestos dust. This disease model is making an odd claim in that, when you're given the disease-causing chemicals you feel fine, but when they're removed the person gets "symptoms". What drugs are a disease? Moderate, low dose amphetamine addiction or marijuana addiction definately don't fall into this model anywhere. Neither does LSD, MDMA, MDA, psilocybin, nicotine, caffeine, and several other chemicals. Are opiate/opioid, barbiturate, alcohol, methaqualone, and benzodiazpine addictions a disease? Where is the line drawn?
 
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All I can think of after reading that is "Fuck I'm glad I don't live in the U.S." The land of the (un)free, overregulated , paternalistic .....you get the drift.
 
It's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be, it's actually better than most people think. Yeah, yeah heroin and cocaine addicts are looked down upon...who cares, they are looked down on by the majority of people on this planet. Europe in more regulated than the US by a long shot.
 
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