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>> Why is it impossible for Westerners not to use drugs, while the Japanese manage not to use it fairly well?

Japanese people drink. Japanese people also are major users of over the counter drugs which we in the west can't get hold of, notably benzodiazepines like flutazolam and flutoprazepam are available to buy there.

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Yes, Japanese people drink a lot, and it is a social issue. But there are a lot of functional alcoholics in Japan.

> Japanese people also are major users of over the counter drugs

Japan is much stricter with medicine than US. Several medicibes that are OTC in US are illegal in Japan: https://jp.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/local-resource...

I am sure that there are abuse of prescription drugs. But I have not heard anything about a systematic, widespread problem (comparable to prescription drug abuse in US).

A cursory reading of the WP says that the legal status of the drugs you mentioned is more or less the same as the US:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine

This is not the impression I have, where it comes to benzodiazepines such as the ones mentioned. It may not be as systematic and widespread as prescription opiate dependency in the US, but it does seem to be a problem, and potentially one that is not fully acknowledged by the medical establishment over there.

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