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To answer your question, because they've never done drugs. people who blame the problem you describe solely on drugs don't know anything about drugs, except that they're scary and they hurt you.
The problems causing drug abuse reflects on the speaker’s treatment of people and the people close to them, it makes them responsible for the fallout of their actions or lack of action.
Blaming the user absolves themselves of any responsibility.
You can apply that to pretty much any social ills, like poverty, homelessness, etc.
IOW, the person blaming the user: may have abused the user in some way as a kid, voted to end substance abuse education in schools, voted to end afterschool programs that might’ve kept kids away from abusive situations or drugs in the house, voted to limit or end food programs that would have allowed people to not become completely destitute and take to drugs for escape, and so on.
Because fixing the PROBLEMS means the people in charge lose money to build functional, supportive social structures.
Much easier to throw victims in jail and monetize their "treatment" by privatizing poor people's tax dollars.
It's an easy, comforting answer.
"That person's life sucks because they do drugs" doesn't raise any uncomfortable questions, and it makes avoiding a similar situation seem easy. "That person is using drugs because their life sucks" leads us to ask why their life sucks and whether the same thing could happen to us.
It takes the "fate" out and puts in a level of control. Well your life is crappy because you do x, I don't do x so I'm safe.
That's a deep answer. Kinda like fundamental attribution error.
It is exactly fundamental attribution error, with a bit of motivated reasoning.
I guess a lot of people who haven't gone through some serious shit in their life really do find it difficult to accept how bad some people have it
Not a lot of vocal people that had big problems, almost turned to drugs, but didn't, and noticed they still had problems.
Why do people with problems assume other people don't have problems, or have strength, or emotional maturity? We are all fragile and barely hanging on. All of us.
A popular theory among self-proclaimed paychonauts, or people that like to experiment with drugs, but mostly psychedelics, is that using mind-altering substances could lead to ideas or insights that could be (considered) a threat to the status-quo. This is why the powers that be often demonize all drugs equally.
As others have pointed out, many people don't really like to think about the systemic issues in society that drive people into poverty, homelessness or other problems that often go hand on hand with drug addiction.
It should be pointed out, though, that some drugs can and most likely will ruin your life. The first rule of experimenting with drugs is never, ever try heroin (or other opiates).
I concur. From a historical-perspective, rooted in colonialism, drug use was prohibited due to the effect it had on labour's compliance, even if the use was an indigenous cultural phenomenon. Rather, it made life more difficult for those charged with its administration.
I think the OP is mistaking the propaganda for reality. People generally aren't thinking about others in any significant way. They just don't want to deal with an inconvenience so brush it aside by falling back on the propagandized version of reality that is given by the government and corporations. It's the safe answer and the institutionally accepted answer. Anything else requires conflict and Deborah just wanted to buy coffee and get to her appointment on time, not debate with unhearing television screens, radios, strangers, law-enforcement-drones or a consortium of suited executives. The homeless man was begging on the street due to drugs and a lack of will-power. More importantly to Deborah, he was in her way and was assaulting her senses and cognition. Let the police lock him away.
Homelessness has been increasing here in Australia due to well-understood mechanisms. Those mechanisms have been operating for decades and intellectuals and observers have made critique before. They continue to do so. The issue only gets worse, because it's by design. It's the political class' blueprint and things are working as they should be.
The council would rather pay to have infrastructure torn up, such as the removal of public benches from public property, because the homeless sleep on them and that is unsightly. The fact that the cost would have tripled to have it installed, removed and (presumably) re-installed once the homeless issue was resolved isn't true, because there is no resolutions to hinder the advance of homelessness.
Drugs are a class issue. The labourer is not to indulge in them. The other classes are free to do so within a limit. The demands of industrial society have influenced what that limit is, but there is a clear distinction between the classes. When a lawyer indulges in cocaine and it's made into a public-spectacle the media report about the immense stress placed on lawyers. When the labourer makes a drug-induced public-spectacle the media report on the moral failings of the labouring class and how they must be better controlled.
None of it is coherent and the ruling class don't care. If you're interested in the intersection of drugs and morality, especially if your background is from a Catholic or Christian cult, I'd snarkily implore you to read their histories and the documented drug use of these cults that underpin Western-democratic morality codes. There's a reason the Bible is like a fever-dream of a druggie, because it is one. The needs of capitalism, of regimented time-controlled labour, now prohibits such use and the priest class pivot to create a narrative of why it is so, even if their documented legacy shows them to be lieing dogs.
Drugs are an inseparable part of the human experience. Have fun; look after each other and listen to your elders' advice. I'd caution that the cultural ceremonies that had implemented recreational drug use have been obliterated from living memory for some social groups and we now find ourselves in societies that mass-produce novel drugs. It's uncharted territory in one sense.
Can't that be the same for other things? Drugs, violence, guns, gangs, etc.
Nobody should want to do those things with a healthy mindset.
I don't disagree
Listen how are we supposed to argue if you keep agreeing with me
I don't like your tone but I accept your right to an opinion
It's not either/or, it's a self-reinforcing cycle, though it isn't usually the drugs themselves that start it.
A simple explanation of a complex problem
The drugs mess up your brain chemistry. Yes, they were in a bad place and did drugs. Being in a bad place didn't make them engage in prostitution, break into cars, share needles, sleep outside, not brushing their teeth, not shower, etc. The drugs did that, and the drugs will keep them in that state until they hit rock bottom or die. You are correct that economic blight causes drug addiction, but drug addiction causes peoples' lives to get so much worse.
Oh do fuck off with your holier than thou outlook.
Signed: someone who was in that position, married to someone else who was in that position.
I'm in no way saying drugs will fix problems (majority of the time), I'm saying drug abuse should be treated as a symptom and not a cause
It's both, but you can't address the mental health and economic circumstances until the person gets clean. They're not mentally able while they're on drugs.
I think not addressing the mental health and economic substances until they are "clean", will make it a lot harder for them to get clean
I don't understand why we need to pick one or the other when thorough and holistic interventions would work a lot better
I agree with your overall point, this is more of a nitpick on the wording
I agree with you. I had a drinking problem. I tried AA and other methods to stop drinking and they never even came close to helping. One day I discovered that for me, alcohol and opiates did not mix and made me violently ill without fail.
Using that to my advantage, I became addicted to opiates, knowing I couldn't drink while on them. It broke my mental addiction to alcohol a few months after the physical addiction was gone. Breaking the mental addiction was the critical part. Once I knew I no longer wanted to drink, I knew it no longer had control over me.
Breaking the opiate addiction afterwards was easy because I never really wanted to do it in the first place. I never had the mental addiction. I just drank until the opiate physical addiction was gone, then stopped drinking because I already didn't want to, it was only a tool being used.
I don't recommend anyone try this method though. It very likely will kill anyone who attempts it. I wanted to share because for me, it confirms what you said, forcing an addict to get 'clean' will only make it harder for them to do so. In my opinion.
Because if you give them money, they're going to spend it on drugs. If you give them an apartment, they're going to destroy it and not care, because they're on drugs. I understand it'd be "nice" if addiction treatment wasn't hard, but it is.
If you give them money and they spend it on drugs, maybe it's because they still did not have enough money to believe they could live a normal life.
If they destroy an apartment given to them, maybe that apartment was cheaply made and not fit for humans in the first place. Maybe if it were worth caring about, they would care about it.
Mental health treatment ≠ addiction treatment
An addict is more likely to stop being an addict once their normal human needs are fulfilled.
A mentally ill person does not stop being mentally ill, unless a cure exists. Their symptoms can be mitigated or reduced at best.
Pay attention to my use of the words "maybe" and "more likely", these are not absolutes and that's most of my issue with your comment. If you give SOME of them money, they'll spend it on drugs. If you give Some of them an apartment, they will destroy it. Others however, might spend that money on an apartment and nice clothes to interview for jobs with.
These are all just my opinions. I am someone who has destroyed apartments, spent money inappropriately on drugs and alcohol, and did not care about anything for a decade unless it modified my state of consciousness. It took love and patience from a couple people and it wasn't easy for them. It took a couple years and wasn't cheap, but I think it worked and I am lucky to have those people make the effort. I believe it's a solution that should be attempted more. Giving someone money or an apartment is a short term fix that ignores the problems. Giving someone love and patience is a long term solution that difficult but has better odds the longer it is done. There's always exceptions though, some people are just fucked.
I agree, but I meant that both interventions need to happen at the same time since having regular contact with support and being able to rely on them (instead of drugs) while getting clean will make it more likely that they succeed.
I feel like we might be pushing for the same point, and are talking about different sides of it
I'm not advocating for self medication but I'm saying there are legitimate uses for drugs, especially with mental health problems. Hell even ketamine, mushrooms, and LSD are accepted forms of therapy in this day and age.
Thank you for a sane take. So many people online seem to not understand the reality of things like drug addiction, alcoholism, homelessness, etc. None of these are quick fixes and all of these spiral into one another.
It is very useful for collecting votes, justifying increased spending, and is ultimately lucrative. A lot of political topics are like this, IRL reality is more complex and no one has a silver bullet
Mmm. Used to misdirect hate and anger towards a group of people who mostly don't have the means to defend themselves because they're down on their luck already. Social scapegoats.
Talking about the problems and circumstances people face which may lead to substance use (including alcohol and THC) is still stigmatised and socially taboo in the community compared to the simplistic conversation about effects of substance use.
Can you imagine if we all spoke openly about the problems and various forms of abuse, neglect and violence in the community?
I'm professionally neck deep in this, and still people turn to coping mechanisms before opening up. It's rather sad.
Rugged individualism and idealism. We have long been conditioned to view these things as a personal moral failure rather than the inevitable result of social pressures. Mainly because this is more convenient for our masters.
it's the narrative pushed by the government, and most people are insufficiently wary of the stories they are told by the powers that be.
if people abuse drugs because of a history of generational and personal trauma at the hands of racist, capitalist, i and imperialist forces, then the obvious answer is to counter those forces. if people abuse drugs because they're just bad people who make bad decisions as part of an immutable personal failing, it is far easier to justify criminalizing drug use, imprisoning drug users, and using them as slave labor to fuel the machine.
at least, that's definitely what's going on in the US.
Those who want to control us need a boogeyman to point at, one that is NOT themselves.
Ultimately, this is the reason.
But how did the overlords drill the misconception into people's minds so well
The "War On Drugs™"
See D.A.R.E.
Not necessarily a proper answer, but..
Captain Ketamine is supposedly worth over $2 trillion...
Do you consider weed a drug? What about alcohol?
I consider weed a drug in the sense that it it's a substance that affects people physically and mentally but obviously not in the street sense of the word. Yes alcohol is a drug to me.
I appreciate the consistency.
We all have our coping mechanisms. And without any doubt some of them are healthy and most of them are bad... And some of them will actively kill you.
Drugs is in the last two categories.
Tbh I think weed is a terrible drug, killing motivation and clouds thinking - but it is a step above alcohol. And should be legal.
What we need to have a social network where nobody needs to turn to drugs, but realistically it's not going to happen.
I never saw weed as causing someone problems in their life. I would agree that life can drive some people to use drugs, but I also think that meth makes life exponentially worse.
Yes but how many meth heads do you know that randomly decided to do it one day for the hell of it? I'm sure there's some out there but 99.9% of the time it's going to be someone in such a bad situation that they don't care about the long term consequences, they just want to not suffer.
I know a lot of 'meth heads'. Most of them were prescribed Adderall as kids but as adults it became harder and harder to obtain prescriptions and they eventually turned to alternative solutions to get their medication.
Correction, "knew", I knew a lot of meth heads. Most of them died from opiates added to their medication they didn't know about. Fun fact: no one has ever died from a meth overdose. It's always meth in combination with something else, usually opiates.
I mention this because there's a stigma with meth prevalent in society and it is very unfair in my opinion. There are meth users and meth heads. A meth user is capable of living a very normal life. A meth head is created by society, mental illness, malnutrition and poverty. Just my opinion.
The other layer is why do some turn to drugs as their coping mechanism while others never do.
What’s giving people, in similar circumstances, better coping options/skills, or just inherent resilience, vs not?
Genetic predisposition for addiction, environmental or situational factors, tax brackets, the list goes on.
Lot easier to get drugs if you're in an environment with easy access to them. Lot easier to get hooked if you're predisposed to addiction. The drug of choice changes as you go up the wealth ladder.
I know I probably wouldn't have used weed to self medicate if I didn't have ready access to it
Mostly environment and familial influence
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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