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Comment by hugh4 | Hacker News Reader

>Lewis-Kraus makes the (sadly still common) mistake of assuming that the reader has an identical understanding of what a "drug" is, and that the category of "drugs" is well-defined and discrete. Are LSD and heroin in the same category of thing? Is sugar in this same category?

That sounds like a reasonable assumption about the reader; that they understand how words are used in contemporary English. The answers to your questions are "yes" and "no".

The reader can also be assumed to know that, for instance, vancomycin and doxorubicin are also drugs, but that in this context the word "drug" is being used in a context which excludes them, just as the word "animal" is sometimes used in a context which includes humans and sometimes in one which excludes them.

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First - and this is the weaker argument - I dispute that the word "drug" is well-defined in contemporary English. For example, in Ocean City, MD, there is literally a drug store which is demarked by a huge - I mean huge - sign that says, in all caps, "DRUGS." Which makes some sense because it's, well, a drug store.

But then, as you get closer, you can see that, in smaller letters above "DRUGS", it also says, "Ocean City says No To" - literally two apparently conflicting definitions of the word on a single sign.

And I don't think this is even slightly uncommon.

Second, and more importantly, by putting LSD and heroin in the same category, the author comes up with a genre of writing he calls "drug books," which appear to me - if the author's reading of the book being reviewed is even accurate - too little in common to be useful.

Except you just proved that you're an example of the exact point that the commenter was writing about. LSD and Heroin aren't really in the same category. They have completely different profiles of experience.

And yet they're similar in several important ways (e.g. the legal framework around them, the fact that they should both be avoided for similar reasons), hence the fact that we have a word for them. I don't really care what the subjective experience of taking them is like.

They're certainly more similar to each other than they are to antibiotics or chemotherapy drugs, both of which are also labelled with the term "drug".

> similar in several important ways (e.g. the legal framework around them

You are mistaking noise for signal here.

> the fact that they should both be avoided for similar reasons

In no sense is this a "fact." Many people suggest LSD use. Many people regard themselves as better for having used LSD. I don't think LSD is something to be avoided at all - it's utterly benign and very, very interesting.

> They're certainly more similar to each other than they are to antibiotics or chemotherapy drugs, both of which are also labeled with the term "drug".

In which ways? LSD is dissimilar to just about anything else on the planet, and has little in common, as far as I can tell, with opioids, antibiotics, or chemotherapy drugs.

And again, let me bring up refined sugar. Sugar is a refined white powder, made by solvent extraction form plant matter, and is consumed solely for its chemical effects on the nervous system. It seems far closer to heroin than either of them are to LSD or MDMA or psilocybin. Yet these three, along with heroin, are "drugs?"

I can't imagine a consistent taxonomy which casts such a wide net on behalf of the term "drug" as to include both heroin and LSD but exclude sugar.

> I don't think LSD is something to be avoided at all - it's utterly benign and very, very interesting.

I take it you've never had a bad trip then?

I used to use mushrooms and LSD as a teenager and enjoyed it a lot. Until I had a bad trip, which was a truly horrible experience that at the time seemed like it would never end. I've never used any psychedelics since, and never will.

You're right. "Utterly benign" is too strong.

LSD is a very strong medicine, but it's possible to consume it in such a way that is profoundly helpful; what's more - it generally visits upon its users substantially less grief than heroin, to which it was being compared.

>the fact that they should both be avoided for similar reasons

Apart from the "legal framework" what would be those "similar reasons" be?

>They're certainly more similar to each other than they are to antibiotics or chemotherapy drugs, both of which are also labelled with the term "drug".

What have you been smoking?

Heroin is several orders of magnitude more similar to antibiotics / chemotherapy drugs than LSD.

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