"People felt like they always wanted to: splendid, completely calm, clearheaded; it was a golden feeling." That sounds good! I'd like that...
All I've seen in drug users is wreckage and death. Maybe I haven't seen the whole picture. Is there an upside to drug use? If there was a safe performance pill maybe I would try it.
The problem comes in when you want to maintain the level of awesome ... and can't. That's when the detrimental side effects hit.
You can be quite a high functioning, normal member of society with a drug habit. As long as you can pay for it, and as long as it doesn't interfere in the aspects of your life you don't want it to, one can make a rational case for continuing drug use.
Think about coffee. It's great. It makes you feel great. It's socially acceptable. It's also highly addictive, and the withdrawal symptoms can be nightmarish for some people. But it's not viewed as a bad drug.
Drug use is illegal and is taboo. Many people who take drugs are not going to talk to you about it.
You won't have seen a lot of drug use. You'll only have seen the worse end of drug use.
You have seen plenty of people who can have a few alcoholic drinks a week? That's drug use that doesn't end in wreckage and death, even though alcohol is very harmful and very addictive. (And physically addictive, not just psychologically addictive.)
Indeed. As has been well known in the addiction literature for a long time now, the overwhelming majority of addicts just sort of... get over it. The addicts that show up more prominently are a very selected subgroup. To give an example that will doubtless be familiar to many HN commenters personally, modafinil is used more widespreadly than it is acknowledged; in the survey I'm running now, most respondents just use it practically with no drama or mess.
Drugs definitely have their role in the world. People are prescribed amphetamines daily to function better. However, as with anything that changes how you perceive the world, there are always new chances to hurt yourself. My best advice is not to view drugs as an end themselves, but a means to reach a mental state.
The "safe performance pill" is called adderall. I would not call it very relaxing, though, or calming; it merely makes reward feedback much, much stronger.
Alternatively, there is acid, which is its own thing. Do your research heavily with that, but I experience it as very relaxing and clarifying. It is also extremely hard to abuse in a way that would cause "wreckage and death".
1. What is the lesson to be learned?
I believe that the lesson to be learned isn't that drug use makes you better or worse. It's that people of all walks of life abuse drugs. Even people who are very successful. Despite the immense power of drugs. It is still the person, not the drug that determiness a person's life. Aaron Sorkin is a crack head. He's starring in that new Steve Jobs film, but has also worked on such successes as West Wing and The Social Network. Does crack make you successful? No.
2. All I've seen in drug users is wreckage and death. Maybe I haven't seen the whole picture.
Drug use is rampant in the United States. It's just hidden or is not considered drug use because a prescription is involved. Remember how out in the open alcoholism used to be? (Think Mad Men. Or talk to a grandparent about how things used to be.) Alcoholism didn't just go away. People just started keeping it to themselves.
3. Is there an upside to drug use? If there was a safe performance pill maybe I would try it.
Amephatimes, Speed, Aderall. All the same drug. All abused across the country by college kids. I really don't know what the long term dangers of amphetamines are. Not only college kids are abusing them, that's just where it's most obvious. People use them as smart pills. They apparently allow you to focus on working and studying for hours.
In closing, I think being smart and talented can also come with sadness and other mental issues. Sometimes drug use is a way for talented people to self-medicate. The talent and potential is still there. It's comes down to the individual whether drug use will inhibit them from their goals.
Many drugs have an impact on your mental state.
I personally suspect that if someone has an addiction they cannot break, there is probably some underlying problem fueling it, possibly a physical health issue. So saying drug use is associated with wreckage and death....cancer leads to drug use and wreckage and death. But sometimes, cancer leads to drug use that averts death, though at a cost.
Thus, you get somebody like Willie Nelson who is essentially a life-long pot head where his drug use/abuse didn't get in the way of his work; Willie has also noted that Waylon Jennings was fond of speed, but that Willie didn't like the stuff. Going down the list of accomplished writers yields a treasure trove of alcoholics not frequently remembered for the wreckage they made of their lives (F. Scott Fitzgerald, O. Henry, Hemmingway).
As a society in the US, the unfortunate moralistic approach to addiction as a personal failure rather than a physiological concern holds back those who could likely benefit from certain substances but never come into contact with them. Also of note, it would seem a certain percentage of the US population simply has an addictive compsition:
http://cdn.thewire.com/img/upload/2012/10/12/drug-spending-v...
Heavily paraphrasing here - I guess this is mostly a personal observation. I am curious to understand if I should explore drug use - if so many high-performers are drug users then maybe I should give it a try.
These "high-performers" mentioned by the parent post, do you want to live the lives they did? O. Henry died when he was 47, in part due to liver cirrhosis. [1] F. Scott Fitzgerald died when he was 44, in large part because of his drinking. [2] Frankly "The Great Gatsby" feels kind of dingy and depressing, and I, personally, do not want to have the kind of experiences in my life that would enable me to write such a book. Hemingway had four marriages and ended up committing suicide. [3] All the people I know that have been through a divorce describe it as extremely painful; to do it three times must leave a huge emotional scar. Is that the kind of "happier lives" you want to lead? Is it really high-performing to die at 44? How much greater could they have been if they weren't depressed, addicted, and/or lived twice as long? Have you read about the kind of lives alcoholics and their families have, let alone addicts of heavier drugs? Do you like being out of control (because when you are addicted, the addiction controls you, not the other way around)?
Be wise. Don't believe the lie that you would be free if only those taboos weren't holding you back. What if there is a very good reason those taboos are there?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry
I've lost a lot of friends and family to drugs and alcohol - unfathomable damage. My best friend is using a lot of speed right now - I worry that he will be next. But damn he works like a tornado.
I've worked with tons of people who use drugs of some sort or another. My experience is that they perform fine until they don't. When they crack the bottom falls out and they're tossed into the rubbish pile without a second thought - disposable.
I can see the possibility that drugs could enhance your work performance. But can't see how drugs would help when trying to maintain relationships/kids/family.
I encourage you to share your stories, if it isn't too painful. I think if you distill your observations, like your third paragraph, and illustrate them with some of your stories, it would be a compelling article.
I've had lots of friends and family killed by drugs and alcohol - I've got stories! But if you never had a negative experience, cautionary tales won't resonate.
I suppose evolution will sort things out in the long run, one way or another.
I didn't mention alcohol and those authors to make light of addiction, but to elaborate that even socially acceptable drugs can carry with them negative long-term outcomes. If you think for a minute that you'll achieve in your entire lifetime what O. Henry and F. Scott Fitzgerald did in <45 years - during the early 20th century when dietary input care standards were extremely lacking ("The Jungle") and medical science was barely out of primitive conditions (e.g. soap) - then by all means, lets see how much of an impact you've had on society at large. These were high performers who achieved heights that you can not begin to conceptualize with the outlook you've constructed.
It's like you totally ignored my caveats that every individual has individual tolerances, personality traits, or genetic factors which render drugs a risk-bearing proposition! You've made the very, very common mistake of assuming that without alcohol those writers would have been as uninhibited or determined to perform their art. It's like the "deal with the devil" that artists understand and fear - if doing something results in success, then along with it comes a lot of baggage to continue down that path.
You've done nothing but try and re-inforce that drugs such as alcohol lead to inevitable ruin, and completely glossed over the achievements those individuals did. Do you honestly think that O. Henry went to the bottle because it was his muse, or can you fathom the concept that the bottle was the way he coped with his insecurities as a pathway to actually doing something constructive with his life?
Wise up. Don't believe that you can cite Wikipedia and some friends who got divorced and use that to go toe-to-toe with somebody who has seen both the bright skies and pits of hell that is called life. What if you're part of the problem holding back our species?
Stephen King has trouble recalling writing a number of his books during the eighties due to alcohol and cocaine abuse. [1]
Sigmund Freud was a cocaine abuser up until the point he started to become a more noted researcher [2]
[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1178151/Stephen...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/books/review/an-anatomy-of...