And I believe humans have been getting high for fun longer than we've been humans. All great apes consume mind altering substances recreationally, we're not remotely special in that regard. Putting restrictions on who can get high and when is something that only occurred after humans had invented domination systems, and much like restrictions on who can have sex with whom and when, they exist only to strengthen the control of the ruling class.

Smoking tobacco is tremendously widespread and is absolutely recreational. Tea and increasingly coffee are also widespread and are absolutely recreational drugs.

Ephedra was used relatively extensively in the past for energy and focus, not really distinct to how uni students use speed or modafinil.

Everywhere has a history of drug use, the backlash is a recent historical thing and it's selective as hell.

While I'm sure canabinoid hyperemesis is quite a real problem, my anecdotal experience is of an ER doc ignoring a first dose of a medicine taken just before the vomiting began and focusing on marijuana use and diagnosing someone with canabinoid hyperemesis. They just stopped taking the pill and told their doc they need to go back to the old one. Never had an issue since and weed use has dramatically increased around these parts

It's a drug. It can be harmless if done correctly. All drugs carry this sort of problem with it. Tylenol isn't completely harmless either when abused etc. Weed suffers from worse issues of course but that is where the problem is. We treat drugs as if it's "good" drug or "bad" drug. Which honestly, now that I type this probably goes back to Western Christian societal issues but that's a whole ass other conversation.

In reality, it is a drug. I can take my vyvanse and go to sleep. My wife takes my vyvanse and she would probably be crawling up the wall with her heart almost pounding out of her chest. What's good for the daisy is poison for the cactus and all that.

Almost every drug has a duality to it. However, we can't have a normal conversation in this country without everything turning into "good" or "bad" when the truth of it is "well it depends with like five **** and 20 references"

Hell, weed can be harmless and then suddenly not if something happens to the person to change the situation. Human bodies are not static, which is something that is a radical thought to most people, which is wild to me. Something about at least Western medicine has us treating our bodies like they are literal machines, like an engine or something, when they are biological processes with a complexity that we can't even wrap our minds around.

Now, speaking as someone who is suffering from a auto immune disorder that has taken over 5 years to figure out (still not there), when you have shit insurance and have never had a good doctor in your life, you probably are going to cling to weed like a life raft if it has given you any amount of comfort. I had some of the best sleep I have had in ages on whatever they gave me for my surgery. Even before that, I had a bottle of oxy in my cabinets that I had a hard time getting rid of that I got for a different surgery that never happened. There is a little creature in the back of my mind that wants me to go find that shit and take it, cause it literally hurts me to sleep in a bed all night long. I will wake up the next morning in pain, and as of right now there really isn't anything I can do about it. The thing that has probably saved me from this is support and medical knowledge. The lizard brain, though, that desperately wants a good, nice, normal sleep, doesn't really give a shit. Now what happens if you don't have support, medical knowledge, or knowledge that good medical people exist? You take the drug and then are a dog with a bone if someone tries to take it away. That's not even getting into addictive issues.

The west is fucked. We are all clinging to whatever floats our way as the ship sinks, and sometimes those things drag us under faster.

Yeah, my least favorite is the "weed isn't addictive" trope.

It's not physically addictive like cigarettes, but man every time I pick up weed it becomes a nightly habit that is hard to resist.

I have a friend from China who will get shitfaced off 20 shots during CNY but looks disgusted when someone pulls out a thc drink lol

Is this really a thing unique to China though?

no it's not and xhs keeps blowing my mind at how socially conservative the chinese are and recently as last night as i read through a heated & long exchange with an overwhelming majority of people calling for the police to intervene because a man was walking bare chested in a public space without exercising or swimming and with a tiny minority saying that it was no big deal.

the social conservatism reeks IMMENSELY of the social conservatism that i had to suffer and struggled to escape from in small town america as a queer & autistic brown person and it's just as immensely disappointing to learn that it's so strongly manifested in even the largest cities of the world's preeminent socialist hegemony.

It's great for my sex life fr.

This, but in kind of a dark way.

A well-known trope among counterculture types is that it can "lift the veil" and let you see through layers of obfuscation that have been put around society and reality by The Man™️. And in my experience, I have found this to be quite true.

The dark part is, sometimes it helps me realize that I, am, in fact, The Man sometimes.

That is to say, I will realize that I have in fact put layers of obfuscation between my perception and my own reality, which serve as extremely comforting separations between my current self, both in situation and effort, and the material reality of the current state of my life and the actions I am taking within it.

So things like, oh I don't have enough money to maintain my lifestyle much longer, I'm not making enough effort to better my skillset to improve my career prospects, I am not putting in the work to keep my important social relationships healthy - these are very distressing thoughts, but I am a master as rationalizing and finding ways to justify these things to myself so that I can just kinda skate by and make it to another day.

But sometimes when I imbibe on the magical buds (not every time, mind you), I find that even my own self-made illusions are lifted, and I see my own negative contributions to these situations and the impending consequences looming before me that I've been happily ignoring. It's often quite distressing and can be a very anxious experience, but in taking a moment and examining the situation, it can be pretty clear its not just reefer-madness induced paranoia, but its actually just the real actual depressing situation I've put myself in, and I really actually have been avoiding dealing with it. The veil is lifted from my own self-delusion and I see my own bullshit for what it is.

It has seriously led to some of my most important self-renaissance changes in crucial moments throughout my life. Not every time, of course, and truthfully it sometimes makes the negative consequences of some things so much easier to bear that it can remove a major impetus from making some changes. But it absolutely does raise awareness more often than not, and sometimes the things it helps with are bigger than just "I should get off my lazy ass", and having something that can almost instantly alleviate a random dark cloud mood can really be incredible sometimes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars