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Comment by eurasiantiger | Hacker News Reader

”Doing drugs” evokes images of injecting hard drugs with all the unclean nastiness.

”Experimenting with psychedelics” is really, really far from that reality.

I'm going to just go ahead and inform everyone that experimenting with psychedelics is doing drugs.

I do hope to live in a world someday where informed consent is sacrosanct and legally protected; and people don't feel the need to split hairs like this.

It was clear to me he meant prior to taking the psychedelics.

This just confirms why that image people have is completely ridiculous.

Which is silly because like the majority of drinkers the majority of illegal drug users aren’t like that stereotype either.

Sorry, no. Drinking alcohol is "doing drugs." The imagery you're evoking is propaganda. Don't validate it.

So is drinking coffee. “Drugs” as an umbrella term is either too broad or too politicized to have much meaning without referring to specific substances. Even classing them by category can be tricky: caffeine and cocaine are both stimulants, for example.

Classifying drugs is, itself, a problem. For example, fentanyl is used in medical settings. The US has pushed an international categorizations of "no medical use" which paradoxically has prevented research into drugs that would find medical uses (research with a hypothesis that "drugs are bad," however, was allowed). We're finally seeing research into positive effects of what were once seen as recreational drugs. And that's why I dislike OC's statement about not using drugs -- it's playing to the propagandized distinction that drugs are evil (but coffee, nicotine, alcohol, thorazine and gabapentin are all fine)

Yes, exactly. According to both contemporary accounts and traditional usage, cocaine at low doses via brewed or chewed coca leaves is a an all-round better stimulant (meaning it has fewer negative side effects) than caffeine at similar dosage levels via coffee. I’d be interested in trying it. But the specter of being refined into a hard drug prevents coca leaves from being imported or even studied more thoroughly—and cocaine is schedule II with recognized medical use.

What nonsense, is it so much different really? How much experience do you people really have with drugs in america to be making such sweeping statements?

"Unclean nastiness"? And wriggling around on the floor on a big dose of LSD for 12 hours is casual clean fun? Getting psychosis from shrooms is not a big of a deal as getting hooked on heroin?

Romanticizing psychedelics is a good starting point for abuse.

Some subset of people do some subset of drugs in order to have an exciting/fun/heightened experience (e.g. cocaine on a night out to feel more confident and energised)

Some subset of people do some subset of drugs in order to settle addictive pressure (e.g. popping one’s codeine pills for the day)

Some subset of people do some subset of drugs in order to gain psychological or insight or have spiritual experience (e.g. taking psilocybin with an appropriate setting)

While the lines can be blurry, these are distinct use cases each with their own risks and considerations so they’re worth separating out.

The distinction you're making isn't the drug, it's the purpose, and you left one out: people also take drugs for medical reasons, with or without a prescription (aspirin is a drug).

For example, weed can be used for all five of those purposes. But what's the value you see in separating them?

Yep, exactly. Sure, I've left out medical reasons but principally it's not what most people have in mind when they talk about 'doing drugs' - even replacing aspirin with something psychoactive (e.g. SSRIs or anti-psychotics).

My point was in response to the parent's 'is it so much different really' question - when you insist that all varieties of reasons that people might be ingesting psychoactive substances stay under the same banner it's a fair bit harder to have a useful conversation about it.

> wriggling around on the floor on a big dose of LSD for 12 hours is casual clean fun?

Yes.

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