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Comment by minikites | Hacker News Reader

Drug use is seen as a moral failing that must be punished, not as an illness that should be treated.

Illegal drug use. People use alcohol, caffeine, nicotine all the time but most people don't even view those as "drugs".

The boundary between drugs and non-drugs is murky. Even refined salt, sugar, and flour could be classified as "drugs" -- your brain gets affected by them, potentially permanently, and they are hardly natural -- and even less people consider them as drugs.

Refined salt?

salt, sugar, and flour aren't natural?

They aren't typically found in nature in the form in which we consume them. They require human processing (even if it's much less processing than what goes into making a frozen pizza).

i'm curious specifically about what you think we do to salt that changes it so dramatically

Salt is. In my grandma's village we have both natural salt rocks and also salt springs people use for cooking, conserving white cheese or preparing pickles. And that village is not an exception in my country, it is the rule in all mountain areas.

Drug use is self medication in order to seek relief from an illness. That illness is usually mental which some view as a personal failing and not a legitimate medical condition. That or they deem it unimportant enough to care about.

Mostly I agree, but it's not always an illness, sometimes it's just a really hard living situation. (E.g. you're dependent on an abusive partner).

Depression follows easily from that.

Long story short; depression has set in when a previous source of joy no longer brings the expected feeling of well-being. Having encountered this fault, the individual seeks to correct it. Depending on environmental factors, they might choose to self-medicate with e.g. alcohol.

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