Drug use is supposed to be celebratory. If your doing them just because you are missing the point. This is where a fun thing becomes an addiction that becomes an excuse to keep trying something different.

Wishing for altered states is natural, it opens the mind and expands consciousness. At a certain point though it becomes a negative feedback loop. You have already passed this point.

You might consider you are a bit too invested in this part of your life tho?

I once got asked by a friend about her older brother (in his 40s, has a family and child and fully functioning) about him starting smoking a lot of weed. I was asked because I used to have a serious addiction. And so I asked some questions, because doing drugs is not necessarily a sign of anything.

I explained to her that what to watch out for is trying to find a good reason why drugs are not the problem while continuously having problems in relation to them, caused by others or yourself is irrelevant. For example, trying to set up schedules for how much should technically be okay. Maybe glossing over miscalculations and bad experiences, trying the same things in different ways over and over. Basically, trying to really, really control something so much it takes up a very large part of your thoughts and time.

Now look I don't know you but from your post, you spend a lot of time thinking about drugs. If you do them often or not right now is not the question, how much time revolves around drugs and how important are they to you?

A two week break is no break and doesn't prove anything btw, and your friends being unsafe drinkers is not making anything you may or may not do better. Sure they are probably hypocrites and it doesn't sound like anything they are saying to you is helpful in any way, I agree on that. But maybe if one of them spent this much energy thinking about alcohol they would probably be called alcoholics?

https://www.erowid.org/

I would worry about a friend doing drugs, except occasional psychedelics. I wouldn't insult them, but I would worry. And even the psychedelics I would worry about the legal risk here. And would honestly worry about your obsessive approach to them.

I would also worry about anyone drinking too much.

Your friends are wrong, it's counterproductive to insult or demean you for the drug use, it is both rude and unhelpful. Even if they aren't wrong to worry about you, it is your life to live, and you aren't hurting anyone else, they could calmly explain whatever their worries are and leave it at that.

Haha, you are right and you know it. You need validation, and you'll get it here.

I think you might be neurodivergent, but your friends are not. You're an independent thinker , quite logical, & you stick to your principles. You have to have it right. Self doubt & seeing through bullshit are also giveaways.

Drug use is reasonable because you can reason so. Those who arrived at 'drugs bad' arrived because of social conditioning, not because they reasoned into that position. Therefore, you can't reason them out of that position.

Stop trying to convince your 'friends' and do what your independent intelligence & gut instincts tell you.

My friends constantly pester me for taking a "dark path", and every argument I make to try to object to that results in me being called some form of disabled, or immature, or stupid. One outlier online even called me multiple slurs, claiming my actual mental disorders are also completely fake.

Those people aren’t your friends.

I'm the only one who's done DXM, for instance, and I constantly read about new things to try.

Frequent DXM causes brain damage. It’s one thing if you do that a handful of times a year, another if you do it weekly. Kinda like MDMA (although unrelated but same concept). Opium and heroin aren’t safe, not because of the inherent lack of safety (though they’ve always been known to be very addictive) but because the drug war makes the product likely cut with fentanyl or worse. So unless you’re growing and processing your own opium poppies, not safe.

Drugs are a human right. I have a right to determine what goes in my body, and I've been exceptionallycareful, thanks to the help I was never given. I helped myself. I was suicidal, I pursued DIY psychedelic therapy, and now I find myself on a journey that I couldn't be happier with.

Yes, drugs are a human right. Psychedelics get a bad rap due to propaganda but are mostly safe when done thoughtfully.

Perhaps more science than I've provided already will be enough. Maybe the two week break I'm on will satisfy them. Maybe I should spell it out--their drugphobia, and unwillingness to accept different viewpoints, or consider my history, strongly mirrors homophobia and transphobia.

More science doesn’t work on people who go on vibes rather than facts. And drug phobia hardly mirrors homophobia and transphobia. People don’t choose to be queer, but they choose to do drugs. This is a non sequitar the two concepts are not related.

Your commentary on alcohol is a long running one in the weed community. Alcohol is not safe and is essentially poison but not only is it socially acceptable, there seems to be an evolutionary reason for it as other animals are also drawn to partaking in it and they don’t have our human concerns. Letting fruits rot a little before consuming just to get a buzz. And you realize why alcohol is acceptable, when you write about weed, it’s because it’s not taboo anymore. And weed isn’t harmless! Plenty of people worsen their mental health, end up with digestive issues, and occasionally go schizo. And I say that as a pothead for half my life. Supposedly straight nicotine isn’t harmful in itself, but the methods to consume it mostly are.

I'm angry, and it's caused by the very people claiming to "help" me. They aren't helping. They're outright berating and slandering me, and at this point, I'm considering simply dropping them.

You should drop them because they’re not your friends.

You’re mostly right, but you’re wrong to act like drugs are harmless just because socially acceptable ones are measurably worse. And you’re wrong to conflate being against using drugs with being against queerness. You can do whatever the fuck you want with your body but you can’t demand people to accept it.

Also, this reads like you’re young, and factually the brain doesn’t stop developing till about 25 or so. If you’re younger than that you should be more careful as brain damage is real and you can’t get back what you lose.

I changed both my friends and stopped doing a shit load of blow and heavy drinking every few days over the past year and a half. The group did way too much so i saw it as a package deal. I learned that they werent really my good friends either, more superficial about partying.

You're basically me in my early 20's.

I've been making the exact same points for twenty years. Literally.

All it's managed to get me is social isolation.

People are extremely hypocritical, and cowardly. I went to an evening college once in my twenties and the teacher of psychology & religion complained about me to the headmaster, lol.

The teacher once said, after class, silently to me, that "you can't talk about such things, there are minors in the class". (This is before he complained about me to the hm.) I pointed out to him that in the next classroom (history) kids are being taught about Nazis. Like I had to point out to a supposedly professional "academic" in a sense and he didn't even understand the idea. Like so strong is the anti-drug propaganda that he's literally afraid to even talk about drugs, even though they're a massive part of both psychology and religion.

It's not an easy road to walk this.

I tried literally all the drugs in my twenties, didn't shoot up though, but like I've inhaled sketchy stimulants off of foil. I've never recreationally done opiates but I have received fentanyl and have popped Oxys when I broke an arm.

Now now I haven't done anything except weed for years. Well, anything illegal. I would like to buy laughing gas, but that and LSD got a bit out of hand when I was 27 and that's pretty much my only ever where my drug use genuinely got out of hand, but it was due to a work burn-out and not receiving any fucking care even though I went to see several doctors.

So self-medication can be a bit more risky than assigned medication, but it can also be much better if the doctors are shit.

I've never had an addiction to anything except weed and beer. Well laughing gas, arguably the worst, but it goes away as fast as it comes on. It's called hippy crack for a reason though. It's pretty safe to abuse for an evening or two every few months, but doing it very regularly and in high doses and you'll ruin your central nervous system. So as long as you don't polish off a few boxes a day for weeks on row without (or even with really) B-vitamin supplementation, it's safe as houses, pharmacologically. Probably biggest risk is burns you'll get from the cold capsules when chaining them.

I've also been on benzos for years now, but I have literally zero addiction to them. Many people develop horrible addictions to benzos, but me? Nothing. I might run out and I don't even notice until the next time I eat something which doesn't agree with me and the continued discomfort usually makes me take one. I know what addiction feels like and I don't have any craving whatsoever to those.

The ambien is a bit different, I do like the effect. (Actually it's past midnight and I have a doctor's tomorrow so that's good enough an excuse to pop a half. Mmm, Ambien.

But yeah no you're definitely not wrong at all. Responsible and reliable non-risky non-addicted recreational drug users do exist. But most of them are cowards and would never admit publicly to using drugs. Like I'd say definitely all heads of State in Europe have seen illegal drug use without saying shit and most have probably indulged at one point or another. Elon is abusing ketamine, openly fucking tripping balls at the inauguration.

Literally all bank notes have traces of cocaine on them, pretty much. A vast majority, that's for absolute certainty.

I have my own version of McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory (don't look at the joe rogan ones that's crass and reductive when they talk about it, listen to the one from actually Terence McKenna from some talks he did in the 90's. Just youtube and pick your bit there's shorter ones and longer ones.

But yeah, we face hard discrimination. But I think I got banned from Reddit for even daring to bring up the fact that it really makes no difference if I suck a cock or a bong in the privacy of my own house, and the latter is legal to do around here.

Then it's "oh but you're destroying your brain" even if that was the case (and with my usage it's not and never was aside from that month in 2016), we have several sports in which the aim is to affect your opponent in a way to render them unconscious, by either a blow or by cutting off blood to their brain. And that's completely legal.

There literally isn't a single argument that supports the prohibition of drugs. I have maintained for more than 15 years (took me a while to grow out of my weed only legal position) that all types of drugs need to be made available legally to responsible users.

And the amount of problems that would fucking fix is literally incredible to most people. As in the literally will not believe even when hard facts are brought to the table.

It's a massive fucking global market that's going completely untaxed, and literally funding violent crime because those are the only things any conflicts in the trades can be solved; hard violence.

If it was legal, no fucking need, use the courts.

Imagine what South-America would look like if it had zero cartels and instead it provided legally all the world's cocaine. It would be a booming business economy, and without any of the fucking criminals, because pretty much all crime is connected with drug crime. If some criminal organisation does robberies, they would definitely be selling drugs on the side. Robberies are a fuck lot riskier.

Gang crime? All of that is basically just motivated for "turf wars" and shit and it's all funded by drugs.

Cut off funding to practically all criminals in the world.

And I really think everyone should go to an electronic music event at least once in their life on ecstasy or serotonergic substance of their own choosing. I genuinely believe that annual therapy with a strong serotonergic substance might have been what enabled humanity.

My theory is that you'd have your group of 50-100 people or so but since inbreeding is bad, once a year at midsummer you go to the same place to meet loads of other groups. And because humans are sort of averse to strangers in a natural state, you take mushrooms, which enable empathy and prosociality.

And since you go back there every year, might as well build shit there. And when you had built quite a lot there might be one dude who is left to tend to the party place during the year when everyone else is out. And so then you'd like to grow some plants maybe because you won't need to go far from the party place. That's how humanity started settlements, in my belief. And there is quite a lot of proof that we settled down before the invention of agriculture instead of the other way around. Well not proof. Good theories.

And if you've ever visited like a large party where literally everyone is on ecstasy or an equivalent. Uh, so peaceful and feels so safe that I once walked up to a guy in those full body spandex suits. I looked him where his eyes would be, and then very gently gave his testicles a little "honk honk". He then, very calmly, did the exact same thing to me. I bid him a fine evening and continued on, feeling very respected.

Big guys who are clearly on roids run into you and start profusely apologising and seeing whether you're okay.

Unlike in a normal nightclub, where the same guy would probably instantly start a fight, drunk as fuck and high on speed /cocaine (which are dopaminergic, meaning they're sort of "colder" drugs because they don't affect serotonin, just dopamine.)

I hope you manage to keep your friends.

Maybe make like an info package showing that your take is the future. And also remind them of me telling you that it just seems you're in your research and experimentation phase, which I had in my teens and early twenties. But now I've grown out of it. I would like to go to like Germany and see the clubscene and would prolly do some stimulants. But I haven't in years.

You just can't pretend the propaganda is real. You have empathy and intelligence and curiosity and you've discovered what utter utter anti-humanist bullshit this global war on drugs is.

We as a society would be so much better off if we has a wider selection of substances than just alcohol and nicotine. And to remind you, alcohol is literally only legal because the prohibition failed so hard. Organised crime, more drinking, harder drinking. Now there's no Al Capone running around shooting people with Tommy guns, because there's a more or less reputable system for regulating alcohol. Just the fact that you know what you take and how much, as you always know the strength and volume of a given drink, roughly. You can't do that, currently, with powders for example. I mean an experienced person will know roughly how strong something is and how much to take. But imagine how hard it would be to use alcohol safely if "going for one" might mean that you end up with a tiny glass of some almost alcohol free ale, or you get a pint of moonshine. Of course with booze it's pretty easy to tell between moonshine and a low alc beer, but it's less so with pills of ecstasy for instance. You just pop a half and trust its somewhat okay. Using ecstasy is still pretty damn safe, but if we keep the comparison with alcohol, if alcohol was like that, you'd have people passing out mid speech due to having taken way too strong a drink and probably die of alcohol poisoning, whereas the worst is dehydration on ecstasy while rolling too hard, which might cause a very unpleasant few hours as you get cooled down. Serotonin syndrome really isn't in any sort of way a statistically significant risk. And it's only slightly statistically significant for people with SSRI, honestly, as people still think some people are using an older type of mood medication, MAOi, which would put you at a significantly increased risk of overdose and serotonin syndrome. People don't really use those anymore, so SSRI's just sort of mute the effects a little bit, although not the side effects.

I ramble and reached the char limit right about hereeeeeeeeeeee

Im a legalization of victimless crimes type so I believe it should legal but heavily so much so that in most cases I feel folks should not be allowed to be under the influence unless at a private residence or at a business licensed for it or in a conveyance licensed for it. I also hate how much advertising is allowed with most legalization where I feel adult things should only be allowed in adult establishments (including adult websites) and not on outside billboards or regular media and such. None of that helps with your thing though so sorry your post just wanted me to share. I guess basically if your being a productive member of society and are not under the influence in public spaces it would be fine to me honestly. Ugh just to mention another pet peeve I hate most uses of the nsfw mark anyway. Perusing any social media at work to me is like masturbating at work (to take it down a notch like watching a movie or tv show when you should be working). Probably not a good idea. I mean if its specific to your business or maybe business in general like linkedin or even slashdot if your in tech or facebook if your in marketing. Of if you need a background video then something talking about coding or ITIL or something. Then like yeah. otherwise though. common. If your not at work and the community is not specifically for kids then it should only be used for massively pornographic or graphically violent things as to me these are adult areas. If someone can't handle tough things like drug use or suicide talk even for a bit to then close the convo or such. I dunno if they should be online at all. Even spoilers I think if some writes a spoiler is coming in their post then the person should have enough time to back off because they are reading that its coming down the line.