Or it’s because we watched our sisters and daughters change from bright happy driven people to living in filth, on welfare, and becoming completely miserable in life.
Drugs change people. Personal experience, mostly negative.
Drugs change people. Personal experience, mostly negative.
I think there's two categories of drugs and it's harmful to ignore the distinction. I don't know enough about the specifics of all drugs to nail down the definitions precisely but a description will suffice. One category is "psychedelic", the other is opiate. Marijuana is a federal schedule 1 drug in the US, right next to heroin. If we don't train society to differentiate between these two then unsuspecting young people who experiment with marijuana illicitly will say "all those warnings were over something harmless. I'll try heroin next." The war on drugs is perpetuating weed as a gateway to more dangerous drugs. The THC and psilocybin family has its risks in the same way that alcohol and nicotine have their risks; the opiate and methamphetamine family should not be confused or taken lightly by anybody.
Was a really nice guy, seemed fully functional, yet he completely sank his business from whatever he was taking.
While, you write that you don't want to make assumptions, it sounds like you are already set in thinking there is just two issues.
There is much more than just the black and white world you created with "psychedelic" and "opiate."
I get that some people can smoke a joint every few weeks and not have an urge to over due it.
Probably 60% of extended family is hooked and either dead or living with a dead beat.
Whether someone is an addict or not is not about the addict's (or anyone's) opinion. Addiction and dependency are very well understood from a scientific viewpoint.
It's not only “some” people that don't overdo it. A very large percentage of the population has used marijuana and yet you don't see most people in the conditions you described.
I highly doubt the root problem of your 60% of extended family is drugs (assuming we're just talking about stuff like marijuana or psychedelics). If they feel like they need to relax all the time, maybe it's because they're subject to too much stress or are (maybe hereditarily) oversensitive to stressors, in which case they might need some help regardless of drug use.
One last thing (but the most important), psychedelics are decidedly NOT addictive (again, following scientific definitions). In addition to not causing an urge and immediately causing tolerance that lasts for weeks, they're very well-known for ending decades-long addictions and all sorts of negative behaviors (including overuse of marijuana!). At high enough doses, they are nothing like a typical marijuana high. You really have to experience it to understand just how deeply and positively they can change one's life. Ironically enough, they might be a great option for your family to try (under proper guidance) in order to get out of their situation.
What finally got her off drugs?
My parents started a custody battle to have her children taken away. That got her act together.
Her husband got clean after getting 2 strikes in a 3 strike state. 25 years for his next arrest.
My adopted daughter came to us because her biological mother wouldn’t get off drugs. Kept failing to pick her kids up from school.
The number of people I see that say "oh I just use it to relax" is quite high. It is a way to ignore what is in front of you and not have to deal with it. I understand the idea quite well.
What twists me on all of this is the blame shaming of people who say 'do not do that junk'. When they can clearly see the chaos these choices bring. Choices are made one at a time and little choices eventually turn into big nightmares or happy times. Not everyone ends up there. But many do. I know a decent number as well.
Then once lets say you get 'cleaned up'. You now have to re-learn how to cope with life. As the usage of whatever is how you used to do it. But that is no longer there. So it is quite an emotional roller coaster for everyone involved.
I don't mean to say that any substance is completely innocent: in fact, I believe that pretty much any action significant enough to have a positive result can be used in some way to create a negative one. Volatility is dangerous, and drugs often cause volatility. But total reductionism is going to get pushback.
IIRC, they are pretty sure that schizophrenia is a combination of genetics and situation. I'd not say that we need to be guided and supervised (as this would just keep the black market around), but rather better informed and more research on mental disorders. The vast majority of folks that do LSD don't wind up with schizophrenia, and IIRC you have to be predisposed to schizophrenia to develop it after LSD.
I'll note that it is pretty rare to develop schizophrenia later in life as well.
Source: Ex developed schizo-affective disorder, later being diagnosed as schizophrenia. He was in his early 20's when diagnosed, but showed symptoms well before that I could only recognize in hindsight. I've personally done LSD more than 35 times, but completely unsure of how many times that is and that doesn't include other hallucinogens I've done. I, personally, do not have schizophrenia and am 42.
Or perhaps being a latent schizophrenic, he was drawn to LSD/drugs in general. According to a study done in 2006[0] 90% of schizophrenics in the US used tobacco products in 2006, while only 20% of non-schizophrenic people did.
How do you explain this? It’s either “schizophrenic people use drugs at a higher rate” or “tobacco causes schizophrenia”. I’d bet heavily on the former.
Reading books changes people, just look at how many people credit "Atlas Shrugged" as the book that started their journey to become libertarian. Similarly, we see each and every day how effective is propaganda.
We see how hard it is to kill xenophobia, bigotry and other biases. But we also know how these develop, how people get radicalized by terrorist organizations. Yet the same thing happens albeit with a lower intensity and without a focused purpose when people watch/read/consume whatever the community/culture they are embedded in throws at them.
4chan changes people. QAnon changes people. The antivax hysteria changes people.
Psychedelic drugs change people, yet the opioid and crack epidemics were not about LSD, they are about an alcohol++. They are about legal painkillers, yet no one is really advocating banning painkillers.